Dusk had fallen in earnest by the time the stretcher arrived. The horizon deepened from scarlet to violet and the moon was just starting to shimmer through the pine trees. A mild breeze drifted off the water, but the air was still hot and humid and the drone of mosquitoes seemed incessant.
Nikki oversaw the removal of the body and then waited until the last squad car had pulled away from the side of the road before she climbed up to her vehicle and changed out of the damp coveralls into fresh clothes and dry sneakers. Then she traipsed back down to the lake. She had one last thing she wanted to do before heading home.
Turning her back on the bridge, she hurried past the spot where the body had been recovered and then moved steadily along the bank until the path ended at a steep embankment. She could just make out the roofline and the smokestack that rose from the boiler room at the back of the property. She’d been called out to the Ruins recently when another body had been discovered at the bottom of an old elevator shaft. That trip had brought back a lot of memories for Nikki. She’d been meaning to return sooner, but one thing after another had kept her away.
When she was a kid, she’d considered the Ruins her own private hideaway. She’d spent a lot of time prowling through the maze of hallways and rooms. Despite the dark history, she’d never felt uneasy or oppressed there, never felt lonely in that abandoned place when all she’d ever felt at home or in school was alone.
After Riley Cavanaugh had gone missing, Nikki’s trips dwindled, not because she was afraid of being taken, but because her visits had started to feel intrusive, like she was violating a sacred place.
Using vines for leverage, she scrambled up the embankment and paused at the top to scour the looming facade. Most of the windows were broken and a part of the roof had caved in. Curling tentacles of ivy grew up the brick face, reaching for the eaves and creeping through shattered windowpanes. Ignoring the decay, Nikki trailed her gaze over the graceful arches and stately pillars and thought again what a beautiful place it must once have been.
She entered through one of the arches, using her flashlight to chase away shadows from all the deep corners. Running the light up one wall and across the ceiling, she paused on the demonic mural that someone had painted of Preacher. Red eyes stared down at her. Had he really taken Riley Cavanaugh? No one knew for certain. They might never know. The mystery of her disappearance still haunted the town—still haunted Nikki—fifteen years later.
Moving away from the mural, she made her way up two sets of precarious stairs to the third floor. The tall, arched window at the end of the hallway allowed in sunlight by day and moonlight by night. Nikki kept her gaze averted from the area at the back of the building. She didn’t want to think about the poor, damaged souls who had once been locked up there.
She found her room and entered cautiously, wary of the sloping floor and sagging ceiling tiles. Nothing remained of the original furnishings. Most of the beds and mattresses had either been carted away years ago or piled in the basement for rats to nest in. The iron bars at the windows had been removed and sold for scrap metal. Graffiti covered the peeling walls, some of it strange and disturbing, some of it quite beautiful.
Nikki crossed the floor, pausing over a loose board that creaked beneath her weight. She resisted the urge to drop to her knees and pry it loose. Maybe she would before she left. Wasn’t that why she’d come? To retrieve a part of her past she’d left hidden here all those years ago?
She’d been wondering ever since her last visit to the Ruins if the journal was still there. All those dark secrets and breathless confessions she’d poured onto the pages of a spiral notebook. Or had rodents chewed away at her teenage angst, leaving nothing behind but the metal binding?
Nikki had abandoned the journal and her all-black wardrobe when she left Belle Pointe for college. She’d wanted a fresh start in Austin. No sense dragging that baggage with her. But it was hard to bury one’s past completely. She was older now, and age put a lot of things into perspective. Maybe she would find it cathartic to revisit the weird, dramatic girl she’d once been.
Right now, though, she needed a few minutes in this quiet place to think about Dr. Nance.
Hoisting herself up to the window ledge, she sat with legs dangling as she gazed out at the water. The rising moon seemed to hover over his fishing cabin, as if the whole universe mourned his passing.
Why had he gone out to the lake when he was supposed to be in Houston? Why hadn’t he told anyone about his change of plans? How did a strong swimmer such as he was end up floating facedown in the water?
Accidents happened. Nikki saw the results of carelessness and happenstance every day, and yet doubts continued to plague her. She hoped the autopsy would provide answers, but after so many days in the water, the breakdown of organs and soft tissue could make a definitive conclusion impossible. The diagnosis would likely come down to a matter of elimination and educated guesswork.
A floorboard groaned out in the hallway, and Nikki whirled, catching a glimpse of a silhouette through the doorway. Startled, she swung her legs inside and grabbed the flashlight as she hopped down from the ledge. “Who’s there?”
A deep voice said from the shadows, “Adam Thayer. Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I didn’t know anyone would be up here.”
Really? He just happened to come up to the third floor, to the very room Nikki had always claimed as her domain?
“What are you doing here?”
“Exploring.” He appeared in the doorway then, a tall, lean figure with eyes that seemed to pierce through the gloom until he found her. “It’s Dr. Dresden, isn’t it? I saw you on the bank earlier.”
Nikki gripped the flashlight. Why she felt threatened by Adam Thayer, she didn’t know, but that niggling familiarity unsettled her. “Yes, I saw you down there, too. You’re the one who found Dr. Nance’s body.”
He remained on the threshold as he took a quick survey of their surroundings. Was he noting how alone they were? How isolated this place was? Nikki didn’t want to be that person who eyed a stranger in town with unwarranted suspicion, but neither could she ignore the little voice in her head that told her to tread carefully with this man.
“I saw the vehicles drive off a little while ago,” he said. “I would have thought you’d left with the others.”
I should have. I really, really should have. “I needed some time to think,” she said with an uneasy shrug. “I’ve always found this place peaceful.”
“This place?”
Strangely, his incredulity relaxed her a little. She allowed a slight smile. “I guess that does sound strange, considering.”
He ran a hand through his clipped hair as he glanced around. “No, I get it. I think. If you want peace and quiet, you can’t get much more secluded than this. The view of the lake from that window is killer.” He paused. “Mind if I take a closer look?”
She stepped away, keeping him in her line of sight and the doorway in her periphery.
He walked across the room, testing—she could have sworn—the loose floorboard she’d noted earlier. But his hesitation was undoubtedly her imagination.
Propping his hands on the ledge, he leaned out into the breeze. Nikki studied his profile. He looked tall and lean and dangerous in the gathering darkness. Déjà vu taunted, prickling her spine and lifting the hair at the back of her neck.
Who are you, Adam Thayer?
“I can see my grandmother’s house from here.” His voice was a deep, rich baritone. The low timbre seemed intimate in the quiet room.
“In the winter after the leaves have fallen, you can see all the way across the state line into Louisiana,” Nikki told him.
He pulled back to glance at her in the shadows. “You come out here a lot, I take it.”
“I used to. Not so much anymore.” She surprised herself by moving up beside him and leaning into the breeze. The air had finally cooled and the lake looked soft and shimmery under a full moon. “When I was a kid, I could spend hours sitting in this window reading or just staring out at the lake. It was my favorite place in the whole world, though granted, my world was pretty limited back then.” She closed her eyes for a moment, letting the scent of honeysuckle and old memories whisper over her.
“You weren’t afraid of all those trapped souls?”
The teasing quality in his voice made her warm to him, but she didn’t want to warm to Adam Thayer. She didn’t want to feel anything for him tonight or ever. “I was never afraid here. There are far, far scarier things than ghosts.” Her gaze lifted to the scar at his scalp. “You probably know that better than I do.”
“I’m betting we’ve both seen our share of horror stories.” He turned, propping his shoulder against the window frame as he gazed at her in the thin light. “It’s always hard when the victim is someone you know.” A slight pause. “You and Dr. Nance were close?”
“He was a mentor and a dear friend.” She was amazed at how unemotional she sounded when tears burned behind her eyelids.
He folded his arms, seemingly at ease. “I got to know him pretty well before my grandmother passed away. He spoke often about someone he called Nik. He never mentioned a last name, only that you were a doctor. He was very proud of you.”
Nikki cleared her throat. “He was a very special person.”
“Yes. That was the impression I had of him.” Adam turned back to the window, staring out into the night with a brooding frown. “What do you think happened? The overturned boat would suggest an accidental drowning, but things aren’t always what they seem.”
Nikki struggled to keep her voice dispassionate. “I don’t like to speculate. Hopefully, the autopsy will give us some answers.”
“Do you really think it will, though? After that long in the water?”
“We have one of the finest forensic pathologists in the state on our team. If there’s anything to find, Dr. Ramirez will find it.”
“That’s good to know.” He pressed fingertips to his temples as he closed his eyes briefly. Nikki thought again about the shooting, about Tom Brannon’s suspicions. About how easily she’d leaped to a stranger’s defense because of her past experiences with Tom’s father. She liked to keep an open mind, but there were times when it paid to be cautious.
“Are you all right?” she couldn’t help asking.
He dropped his hands to the ledge without answering. “If I were you, I’d pay close attention to the toxicology screen. Minute traces of toxins can go undetected in cases where cause of death is presumed accidental.”
Nikki bristled. “I don’t presume anything. Contrary to what you seem to think, we know what we’re doing down here.”
“I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.”
“Sure you did.”
“If that’s how I came across, I apologize. I’m not trying to step on any toes, but I do have a vested interest in this case. I’m here because Dr. Nance asked me to come.”
Nikki grudgingly accepted his apology with a brief nod. “Sheriff Brannon mentioned that Dr. Nance had called you recently.”
“We talked early last week. He told me something strange was going on in Belle Pointe. Something dark. That it probably had been for years.”
“It?”
“He wouldn’t elaborate. When I pressed him, he said he’d tell me everything when I got here. He mentioned something about files and notes. He said it was all there in black and white, but he wanted me to come down and help him make sense of it. And to make sure he wasn’t going crazy.”
Nikki’s voice sharpened. “He said that to you? He was that worried about his mental state?”
“Apparently.”
She said pensively, “This talk about something strange and dark going on in Belle Pointe... Would you say he sounded delusional?”
“I don’t know if I’d go that far. I can tell you this. He didn’t sound like the Dr. Nance I’d come to know.” His gaze narrowed, as if he were trying to recall the nuances of that phone call. “Are you aware of any medication he was taking?”
“I never knew him to take so much as an over-the-counter pain reliever,” Nikki said. “However, we’ll request his medical records before the autopsy. That’s procedure. But even with a full history at our disposal, cause of death remains indeterminate in more cases than most people realize.”
“One step at a time,” Adam said.
She nodded, shifting her gaze from the lake to his profile and then back to the water. Recognition still tugged and a memory flitted, lingering in the light for only a moment before skittering back to the fringes of her subconscious. Nikki suddenly had an almost overwhelming sense of fate and she didn’t know why.
Beside her, Adam stirred. “I should go and let you get back to your solitude.”
“No, wait. I need to ask you something first.”
He stared down at her for the longest moment before he nodded. Nikki couldn’t tell what color his eyes were, only that they were dark like hers, but with a golden shimmer. Or was that the moonlight playing tricks?
He leaned an elbow against the ledge and waited.
“This may sound like a very bad cliché,” she said tentatively. “But I have a feeling we’ve met before. You seem so familiar to me and yet I can’t place you at all. It’s been bugging me ever since I saw you at the lake earlier.”
“It took me a while to figure it out, too.”
Her breath caught. “Then we have met. When? Where?”
“Right here.”
“Here? At the Ruins, you mean?” Her heart thudded as her focus plunged momentarily to the loose floorboard at their feet. He couldn’t know. No one knew. She’d never told anyone about her secret hiding place. Never confessed to anyone what she’d done.
And yet...the way he stared down at her in the dark...the way his voice lowered knowingly...
She suppressed a shiver. “I’m sorry. I still don’t remember.”
“It was the summer that local girl went missing. Riley Cavanaugh.” His deep gaze took her in. “Surely you remember her.”
ADAM SEARCHED HER face in the moonlight. She didn’t react to the name, but he could sense her wariness. The tension in the room thickened oppressively.
Something crept into her voice that he couldn’t identify. “Of course I remember Riley. Everyone in town remembers Riley Cavanaugh. But I still can’t place you. Are you sure we met here?”
“We never actually met,” he said. “I saw you out here with your friends from time to time, but mostly you came alone. Your nose was usually buried in a book or else you were scribbling in a notebook. We spoke only once that I recall. You made it clear you didn’t like to be bothered, so I kept my distance.”
She shook her head helplessly.
Adam didn’t know whether to be amused or insulted that someone had blocked a memory of him so thoroughly. In Dallas, he had people come up to him on a regular basis to either thank or berate him for a previous interaction. To Nikki Dresden, he was a complete nonentity.
But she was still trying. He’d give her that.
“Who were your friends?” she asked. “Did you hang out with any of the local kids?”
“I didn’t socialize much that summer. I was sent down here to work.”
“Where did you work?” Before he could answer, she rushed to add, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound as if I’m interrogating you. I just know it’ll drive me crazy until I can put a memory with your face.”
“It’s okay. It’ll come back to you eventually.” Or maybe it wouldn’t. And maybe that would be for the best. He’d probably stayed too long in her orbit as it was. The last thing he needed was an entanglement, no matter how superficial or fleeting. Stephanie’s betrayal was still too raw and he was in no hurry to go down that road again. Nikki Dresden fascinated him and that was never a good sign.
“I worked for my grandmother,” he said. “I’d just graduated high school and made the mistake of telling my folks I had no intention of going to college in the fall. So my dad sent me down here to repair some storm damage to my grandmother’s roof and dock. He figured a few weeks of working in the hot sun might persuade me to reevaluate my options.”
“Did it?”
“You could say that. By the end of the summer, I went back home determined to become a police detective.”
She glanced up at him. “That seems an odd transition.”
He didn’t know how long she expected him to keep talking, but she seemed in no hurry to end the conversation. So he settled in and returned her curious stare. “Like I said. That was the summer Riley Cavanaugh went missing.”
A long pause.
She tore her gaze from his and glanced back out at the lake. “Did you know Riley?”
“No.”
“But you decided to become a police detective because of her disappearance?”
“That was the catalyst.”
“Strange.”
They both fell silent, each lost in thought as night sounds drifted in through the open window. Adam studied her profile from his periphery. She was a coroner, but he didn’t see death when he looked at her—the opposite, in fact. Youth and vitality radiated from her slender form like heat waves shimmering off asphalt. She wasn’t beautiful like Stephanie, but she was far more attractive than he’d given her credit for earlier. And still just as enigmatic.
“Tell me more about your summer here,” she said. “We were all so close to what happened. Riley’s disappearance affected everyone who knew her in one way or another. It’s interesting to hear an outside perspective.”
“Haven’t I taken up enough of your time?”
“No, please. Go on.”
He shrugged. “It was a long time ago. A lot’s happened since then. But I remember when I first got to town that the other girl had just been found wandering down a rural road.”
“Jenna Malloy.”
“Yes, Jenna. She was in such a state she couldn’t tell the police anything about their abductor or what had happened to them. Her trauma and Riley’s disappearance were all anyone could talk about, including my grandmother. Before long, I became caught up in the mystery, too. At some point, I got it in my head that I could do what the local police, the county sheriff’s office, the Texas Rangers and the FBI couldn’t. Find Riley Cavanaugh.”
The note of self-deprecation in his voice didn’t seem to register with Nikki. Resting her head against the window frame, she lifted a hand to tuck back the loose strands of hair at her temple. “Everyone looked for Riley. The search went on for months. They brought in bloodhounds, psychics. No one could find her.” She shook her head sadly. “It was a terrible time for her family. For the whole town. I don’t think Belle Pointe ever recovered.”
“Something like that changes a community,” Adam said. “Especially if there’s never an arrest. People get suspicious of one another. Rumors start circulating.”
“Oh, there were plenty of rumors.”
“People like to talk,” he agreed. “The consensus seemed to be that the abductor was a former psychiatric patient named Silas Creed. Preacher, they called him, because of the fiery sermons he delivered on the front steps after this place was closed down. You said you spent a lot of time here as a kid. Did you ever see him?”
She shook her head. “Not here. Not that I remember. But I saw him around town now and then. He did odd jobs to get by. My grandmother always warned me to keep my distance, but before the disappearances, he just seemed like a harmless outcast to me. I felt sorry for him.”
“Do you think he did it?”
“I don’t know. No one ever saw him again after that night. The way he skipped town certainly seemed suspicious. But I always wondered if he ran away because he was afraid of being blamed. People tend to scapegoat those who are different.”
Adam’s voice softened. “He wasn’t the only scapegoat in Belle Pointe, was he?”
“No.” She lifted her face to the sky. Her skin looked pale and translucent in the moonlight, her eyes dark and unfathomable. Something stirred inside Adam. Something unexpected and completely unwise. Maybe even dangerous, considering the circumstances.
“You looked a lot different back then,” he said.
“Which is why my friends and I were scapegoated.” She scowled into the night. “If you were around that summer, you must have heard those rumors, too.”
“About satanic cults and devil worshipping? Yeah.”
She gave him a sidelong glance. “You aren’t afraid to be alone with me out here?”
“Not for a second.”
His conviction seemed to rattle her. “Maybe you should be.”
He pointed to the scar at his scalp. “Foolish or not, I’m not that easily spooked.”
She turned back to the lake. “The police targeted us because of the way we dressed, the books we read, the music we listened to. People started calling us the Belle Pointe Five.” She shrugged, though it was obvious the memory still stung. “Small towns can be rife with narrow minds.”
“The city, as well,” he said. “For what it’s worth, I never believed those rumors.”
“Why not? You didn’t know me.”
Because I found your journal beneath that loose floorboard. Because I learned from reading your innermost secrets that you and your friends were also harmless outcasts.
Harmless...but not altogether innocent.
“I wanted to form my own opinion about what happened,” he said carefully. “In my spare time, I scoured online news sites and social media for accounts of the disappearances, gathering whatever bits of information I could find. It was like putting together a puzzle. I dug it. After pounding nails all day in the hot sun, I’d sometimes take a dip in the lake and then hike down here to poke through the rubble, hoping to uncover something that had been missed by the local authorities.”
“Did you?”
A loaded question.
He hesitated. “Nothing that would lead me to Riley Cavanaugh.”
She fell silent once more, leaning through the window into the breeze. The reflection of the moon on the lake was magnetic, drawing Adam’s gaze down into those dark, murky depths. All their talk about an old disappearance had made him momentarily forget why he was really here. Something strange is going on in this town. Something dark. I think it has been for years.
“Someone’s down there,” Nikki said.
The comment startled him out of a deep reverie. “What? Where?”
She pointed toward the bank. “He’s there, just beyond that large cypress tree. You can barely make out a silhouette. I’ve been watching him for the past minute or so. I thought it was a bush or a limb at first. But then I saw him move down toward the water. Now he’s just hunkered there behind that tree as if he’s waiting for something.”
“Could he be fishing?” Adam peered through the darkness, trailing his gaze slowly along the bank, then darting back when he spotted the silhouette.
“Whoever he is, I doubt he’s fishing,” Nikki murmured. “I never heard a boat. He must have walked down from the bridge.”
He was too far away and it was too dark out even with the full moon to tell who he was or what he might be up to. For all they knew, the man could have a perfectly innocent reason for sitting in the shadows staring out at the lake. But he wasn’t that far from where Dr. Nance’s body had been recovered. That and his stealthy behavior triggered Adam’s wariness.
“Do you think he heard about Dr. Nance?” Nikki asked. “Maybe he came out here to see where it happened.”
“Like one of the creeps who shows up at crime and accident scenes out of morbid curiosity?”
“It would explain why he’s just sitting there,” she mused.
Adam turned on his flashlight and shone it down toward the water.
The beam wasn’t bright enough to penetrate all the way down to the bank, but it got the person’s attention. Instead of running away, he turned on a spotlight and directed the beam up to the very window where they stood.
“DAMN.” ADAM TURNED OFF his flashlight and motioned for Nikki to move back from the window.
She eased into the shadows as her breath quickened. “What do you think he’s doing?”
“No idea.” Adam kept to the side of the window as he glanced out. “But that’s a powerful light to lug around for some random weirdo looking for a death scene.”
His face looked suddenly threatening in the moonlight and his whole body seemed to tense. Nikki had worked closely with law enforcement her entire career. She was in her element around most cops, but there was something about Adam Thayer that continued to unnerve her. It wasn’t just the fact that she couldn’t place him or even the way he looked at her. The man obviously had secrets. What had really happened to him in Dallas and why was Tom Brannon so suspicious of that shooting? Was he that protective of his sister or had he picked up the same uneasy vibe that now trickled down Nikki’s backbone, forming an icy knot at the base of her spine?
She said nervously, “People use spotlights all the time on the lake. Sometimes logs float just beneath the surface. Not to mention all the other hidden debris in the water that can bend a prop or puncture a fiberglass hull.”
“As you pointed out, he’s not in a boat.” Adam left the window and crossed the room to check the hallway.
Nikki turned to track him. “What are you doing? Did you hear something?”
“No. Just making sure.” He glanced both ways down the corridor before turning back into the room.
Nikki watched him in the moonlight. That sense of fate kept tugging, making her self-conscious of his nearness and too hypersensitive to the doubts that Tom Brannon had voiced about him earlier.
“Maybe he’s waiting for a drug deal to go down,” she said in a hushed voice. “There’s a big meth and fentanyl problem in this county.” The spotlight went off and the room once again fell into darkness. Adam eased back up to the window. Nikki moved to the other side. “Can you still see him?”
“No. He may have taken off when he realized he wasn’t alone.”
She peered out into the darkness. “You don’t think he’d come up here, do you? He obviously saw your light.”
“I doubt it, but I’ll go down and check things out. You stay here and keep watch.”
She shot him a worried look. “Do you think that’s wise? If a drug deal is in progress, there’ll be others out there or on their way. Those people don’t mess around. I’ve seen their handiwork.”
“I’ll be fine. Keep your eyes peeled, but stay out of sight. Let me know if you spot anything out of the ordinary.”
“What’s out of the ordinary?” Nikki muttered.
“Any suspicious movement.”
“I’m assuming you don’t want me to shout a warning out the window,” she said.
“Good point.”
They exchanged phones, entered their numbers and then swapped back. Adam took another look out the window before he disappeared into the hallway. Nikki remained on guard, her attention riveted along the bank as she listened to the creaking floorboards in the corridor and the soft thud of retreating footsteps on the stairs.
A few moments later, Adam exited the building and made his way through the weeds to the top of the embankment. He started down without a backward glance and was soon lost to her view. She picked him up again when he got to the bottom and headed along the bank. He moved quickly, using shadows and trees for cover. Nikki swept the area, but detected no other movement. The night seemed very still all of a sudden. Even the breeze had died away.
He left the trail and headed into the woods. Nikki watched and waited, her muscles taut with tension. What an evening this had turned out to be. She’d barely had time to process Dr. Nance’s death, much less to grieve. Maybe it was better this way. Time enough later to plunge down that dark rabbit hole. She knew from past experience it would be no easy feat to crawl back out. She preferred to drift a little longer in shock and disbelief.
After a bit, her phone pinged and she glanced at the screen.
All clear. Don’t see anyone around.
She texted back: Are you coming back up?
Headed that way now.
She pocketed the phone and watched until she knew the coast was clear before she left her position at the window. Locating the loose floorboard, she knelt and used the blade of her grandfather’s Swiss Army knife to pry up the edge so that she could slip the board from the groove. Then she shone her flashlight down into the space. Cobwebs shimmered. Brushing aside the sticky threads, she reached into the cubby, feeling all along the bottom for the tattered edges of her journal.
The notebook was gone. All her secrets were gone.
Sitting back on her heels, she stared at the empty space for a moment before she finally rose and moved back to the window. She couldn’t see Adam. He was probably already climbing up the embankment. He would remain invisible until he reached the top. She could picture him out there now, scaling the steep slope in a few long strides. He wouldn’t need vines to pull himself up. He wouldn’t slip and slide and clutch at dead branches the way Nikki had.
Dropping once more to the floor, she flattened herself facedown so she could reach deeper into the niche. Her fingertips touched a smooth surface. Whatever was in there had been pushed back just beyond her reach.
She pressed her cheek to the floor and angled the flashlight beam into the cavity. Something gold glinted.
Stretching as far as she could reach, she managed to scoot the object toward her until she could wrap her fingers around it. A moment later, she removed a green wooden box with a small gold crown on the top.
She blew dust from the lid and then opened it. The watch inside was large, iconic, and looked to be solid gold. Carefully, she removed the band from the holder and held the crystal face up to the light. Her heart hammered by this time and a cold sweat beaded on her forehead. Still hunkering next to the hidey-hole, she turned over the watch, focusing the flashlight beam on the back of the case until she could make out the engraved initials: C.N.
Charles Nance.
Nikki had never seen Dr. Nance wear this particular watch—he preferred a more practical timepiece for everyday use—but she had no doubt it was his. The expensive watch had been a gift from his late wife, Audrey, and he only wore it on special occasions. When not in use, it remained safely tucked away in the green box and was given a place of honor on the fireplace mantel in Dr. Nance’s study, along with a framed wedding photograph of his beloved wife. Nikki only knew about the gift and its history because Dr. Nance’s housekeeper, Dessie Dupre, had once given her a peek when Nikki had helped dust Dr. Nance’s study. The shrine of items had fascinated Nikki, so Dessie had carefully removed the box from the mantel and opened the lid with reverence.
She was already dying when she gave it to him, poor thing. Now he wears it every year on their anniversary. That’s how special it is to him. The rest of the time it sits right here in this pretty green box.
Is it gold, Miss Dessie?
Solid gold, child. Worth a pretty penny, too. But you can’t put a price tag on a memory like that.
So how had Dr. Nance’s gold watch ended up in Nikki’s secret hiding place?
Someone had put it there some time ago, judging by the thick layer of dust on the box and the undisturbed cobwebs in the cubby.
The same someone who had removed her journal?