back and glared at him. “How could any of this be fine?” she said. “This is so far from fine that it’s not funny.”
“That’s true,” he said. “But it is what it is, and we’ll deal with that. Let’s look at your bedroom and see if there’s anything salvageable.”
Swallowing hard, she walked down the short hallway to her bedroom with Johan at her side. She stared, mute at the devastation in her room. “What did they do? Save the worst for here?” she asked sarcastically.
“Well, this makes it more personal, doesn’t it?” he said. “It’s not only your room, it’s your bed. It’s where you sleep, where you’re secure at night. Or should be.”
She swallowed, half understanding what he said, yet not wanting to delve any deeper into it. “I suppose,” she whispered, “but it still sucks.”
“Yes, it does,” he said, his arm coming around her shoulders to tuck her up a little closer yet again. “It definitely does.”
Not only had the bed been slashed but the headboard, the mattress, and everything in the closet. Then it was all piled on the floor and covered in even more spray paint. She just stared, unable to process the enormity of what she saw.
Kai stepped forward and said, “Let’s see if we can salvage anything out of this,” she said, “and then we’ll get you out of here.”
“Why?” she asked, her tone flat. “What else can anybody do to me?”
“You don’t want to hear the answer to that,” Johan said. “And you’re in shock right now, so I suggest you sit down in the kitchen, and I can go through this stuff with Kai.”
But she took a deep breath, shook her head, and said, “Luckily anything of a sentimental value that I sold when I downsized for this move, I took pictures of. So all my family pictures and the memories are in the cloud. Still, I need to settle down, get my wits back. I need to see the area to remind me what I would want most to save from here. So you won’t know what it is. I don’t yet know what it is. Just give me a minute.”
“You don’t have a whole lot here, right?”
“I came with what would fit in my car. Remember?” she said. “Everything else in here belongs to the apartment owner.”
“So you sublet it?”
“Yes,” she said quietly, “and, man, he won’t be happy.”
“Maybe not,” Tyson said. “But we can contact him and he should have insurance.”
“Do we need to call the cops?”
“They’ve already been called,” Galen said, holding up his phone. “They’ll be here in about ten to fifteen minutes, so, if you want something, you better get it now.”
She didn’t quite understand why it was important until Johan nudged her gently back around to face the room, saying, “Once the cops are here, and they make the connection to the murder scene at work, and they’ll bring in forensics, and they’ll be here for hours and hours going through stuff, and you may not get anything back because it may all be held as evidence.”
“On that note,” Kai said, “let me take a bunch of photos of the place.”
Joy stepped forward carefully, realizing every one of her drawers had been upended. “I don’t even know if there’s anything salvageable. Whoever did this must have left here covered in paint.” She motioned toward a pile of clothing that had been sprayed on the top and on bottom. Obviously whoever did this had kicked over the pile just to coat both sides. She peered into the closet, but they had taken everything out. She stood here, absolutely stunned. She looked up at him. “Find my laptop, will you?”
“Where did you keep it?”
Joy looked over at Kai. “Do you remember where I had it before we left?”
“You didn’t have it out with us,” Tyson said, “and we took all our gear back to the vehicle when we left.”
She looked at him, frowning. “Were you expecting this?”
“We’ve come to learn the hard way that, even when we don’t expect this,” he said with a wave of his hand, “we expect something.”
“Well, I had a laptop. I usually kept it in the night table in the bottom drawer,” she said.
Johan made his way over to the night table, which had been dumped upside down. He lifted it up, and there was her laptop. She cried out in joy as he grabbed it and handed it to her. “Wait. Let me get these cables.”
She nodded and pointed to the