She hadn't even opened her eyes all the way yet. Downstairs, Captain Roger Garvey stood in the wreckage of the front hallway, calling out orders like a man conducting an orchestra of destruction. Clear it every room. He's got a safe in here somewhere. Find it.
Garvey was the kind of cop who liked the sound of his own boots on hardwood. 22 Years on the force, three commendations, a jaw that never seemed to unclench. He'd been told this house belonged to a narcotics suspect with prior, a man who supposedly kept a floor safe stuffed with cash and product. He believed it the way he believed most things, completely, instantly, without a second look. Officer Lauraai Oliver moved through the dining room behind two other officers, her rifle up, her heart hammering.
She was 8 months into the job. She trained for this, but nothing in training prepared her for the sound of a woman crying somewhere upstairs, while men she worked with tore a house apart, looking for something that didn't seem to be there. They hauled Stella down the stairs and out onto the front lawn, still zip tied, still in her robe, and put her on her knees in the wet grass under flood lights enough to turn night into day. Inside, the search kept going and going. A young officer near the kitchen frowned at a folded print out in his hand, the warrant, and looked up at the house number stencled beside the front door.
He walked it over to Garvey. Captain, this says 44 Somerset. Warrants for number four. Garvey barely looked at it. Paperworks, paperwork, he said.
Finish the sweep, sir. If the address is wrong, we shouldn't be. I said finish it. The officer backed off. Nobody argued with Garvey twice.
Oliver heard the exchange from the next room and felt something twist in her stomach. She looked at the address plaque by the door again. 44, Not four. Three blocks off. A different house, a different family, a mistake.
And instead of stopping, they kept going. Nobody else seemed to care. The search only got louder. A sledgehammer went through drywall in the hallway, chasing a safe that had never existed in this house because this wasn't the right house. Cabinets were emptied onto the kitchen floor.
A bookshelf was shoved over. In the living room, a framed family photo. Stella and Francis at their wedding, smiling, unaware that 11 years later strangers would be standing on their broken glass, got kicked across the floor and cracked under a boot. Nobody picked it up. Outside, Stella knelt on the lawn, wrists burning, watching flood lights flash across her own shattered windows.