The Taking (Seven Deadly Sins #3)(18)
Author: Erin McCarthy

For some reason, her dream from that morning popped into her head, and she felt the flicker of arousal spark between her thighs. Her body was clearly sending her a hint that it didn’t appreciate being neglected.

Unzipping her boots in her bedroom and tugging them off, she flung them on the floor at the end of her bed. The room was a disaster of boxes stacked on boxes, but she had a bed, and she’d put sheets on it, so the rest could wait. Except for one thing. Rustling around in the box she’d marked with a heart drawn in marker, she pulled out the stuffed monkey, its ear tattered, tail perilously close to falling off.

It was her sister’s and it belonged in the bottom of her nightstand, close to where Regan slept. She would have preferred it on the bed, but didn’t want to hassle with hiding it every time her mother came over, because invariably one day she would forget, and that would be disastrous considering that her mother didn’t even know she had Patrick the monkey. When she lived with Beau, she had kept it tucked away as well because she hadn’t wanted to explain anything to him, to share the pain of her loss.

Maybe that should have been a red flag to her, that she couldn’t be vulnerable with him.

She supposed it had been.

Tucking the monkey into the nightstand, on his yellow blanket, she took the journal and headed out onto her balcony. Regan flipped past the first two entries she had read with Chris and read two more that outlined normal day-to-day tasks. It wasn’t until she got to the entry on July 2 that Regan got her first glimpse of understanding as to what had happened to this poor girl.

Mother died this evening. I can barely write for my shock. We dined as usual, all seven of us, and all was well. Within two hours she was poorly, and now it is midnight and she is gone from the fever.

I cannot express my grief. My mother, gone. It is beyond comprehension.

Regan sighed, her heart going out to the girl who had written those words of pain. She understood all too well the grief, confusion that death brought.

July 3, I am. Jeanne-Marie has the fever now and is quite ill. Her moans are pitiful and I fear greatly for my sister. Father recalled the physician who left after my mother’s passing, but we have heard the fever has taken the city in earnest and it may be some time before he can return. I can only pace and pray.

1:47 am. Lord help us, both Isabel and Frances have the fever as well. The physician has not returned.

2:01 am. Jeanne-Marie has passed after a brief, but horrendous struggle. Her cries of agony are burned onto my consciousness. I am utterly devastated. My beautiful mother and sister gone from me forever.

4 am. Clara is afflicted as well.

7:17 am. Just finished preparing the mourning room for Mother and Jeanne-Marie. I am moving in a fog of shock and exhaustion.

8:03 am. Frances has joined my mother and Jeanne-Marie.

10:12 am. Father has the fever.

10:23 am. Clara dead.

Noon. Isabel dead.

5:19 pm. Father dead.

5:20 pm. All dead, save me. I pray my time will be soon.

July 5, 1878. I did not die.

“Good God,” Regan whispered as she read the last entry. Those words, scrawled onto an otherwise empty page, told the entire story.

Here was a twenty-year-old girl who had lost her entire family, four sisters and her parents, in less than twenty-four hours. It was unimaginable. No one could recover from that kind of staggering loss.Regan shivered, leaning back in her chair to stare blindly at the house across the street from her.

Her heart broke for the girl who had endured such a horrible tragedy. The girl might be long dead, but Regan wished she could offer her some measure of comfort. But there could be no words to make someone feel better under those kinds of circumstances. It was beyond horrible.

And it had happened in her house.

She sat up straight in her chair. It had happened in her house. All those people had died here, somewhere within these walls. The mother and father probably right there in her bedroom. They had suffered and died from yellow fever.

Regan wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Of course anytime you buy an older home, you have to recognize that at some point someone probably died there, but to know for sure that they had, and in such a tragic montage of death, well, it was a totally uncomfortable feeling.

Though maybe it hadn’t happened here. Maybe the girl had moved here afterward. Maybe it had been a fresh start. Maybe she had married someone other than the undesirable Mr. Tradd.

Regan would have to do a little investigating, but she could find out who had owned the house in that time period and see if she could research the family.

But the question was, did she want to know?

Logic told her they most likely had all died here.

The taxi driver’s story popped into her head. He had mentioned a young woman who had killed herself by jumping off the balcony. Maybe that was true, though it wasn’t over a boy. Maybe it was a young woman who had struggled to continue after she lost her entire family and eventually gave up the fight.

Regan would have to read the rest of the journal to see if there were any clues as to what had happened to the author.

She got up to go inside and snag a Diet Coke so she could keep reading. Passing through her bedroom, she glanced over at her bed. And stopped cold.

Patrick the monkey was on her bed, right in the middle, propped up on her pillows.

She let out a shriek and almost dropped the journal. “Oh, my God.”

Stuffed monkey’s didn’t move by themselves.

Someone must be in her house.

Panicking, she felt her pocket for her cell phone, darting her gaze around the room, but not seeing anyone or anything else of suspicion. Setting the journal down on the chest of drawers, she rushed back out onto the balcony and shoved a chair in front of the French doors. Digging her phone out with trembling fingers, she dialed Chris at the same time she walked the length of the balcony, checking for any intruders through all of her windows.

She saw nothing but empty rooms, the phone up to her ear and ringing. When she passed her living room, she realized that if someone was in the house, they could reach the balcony through that set of doors, but then again, why would anyone chase her onto the balcony?

Chris answered his phone. “Hey, can I call you back?”

“No! Don’t hang up. I think there’s someone in my house!”

“Are you serious? Well, f**king call 911 then!”

Good point. “Okay, I’ll call you right back. Answer the phone.”

“Of course.”

Regan called 911 and explained she thought she had an intruder then called Chris back. “They said they’d send someone over to check it out.”