Last weekend had been…unexpected. Intense. The kind of thing she should’ve regretted and couldn’t, no matter how many times she’d told herself to be sensible.
And now, instead of pushing him away, she was opening the door wider.
“Well,” she murmured to the empty office. “That’s not alarming at all.”
She glanced toward the small stack of unopened mail on the corner of her desk and added, “And I probably should’ve gone grocery shopping first.”
She reached for her bag, but her hand paused over the manila folder sitting dead center on her desk.
Mercer.
The name seemed to pulse beneath the dimming light.
Inside was a man accused of saying over my dead body or hers.
And then there was the text from Sunday.
I know what he did.
Eleanor looked toward the dark hallway beyond her office door.
For the first time, Deck being out of town felt less like freedom and more like vulnerability.
She was a defense attorney. She was used to standing in the line of fire.
But lately, the fire felt personal.
It felt like it was moving closer.
She slid the Mercer file into the bottom drawer and turned the key. The metallic click echoed in the hollow office, a small, futile sound against the weight of the secrets inside. She was locking it away, but she knew better—the truth didn't stay in drawers.
Then she picked up her purse.
Reid would be at her house in less than two hours.
The thought sent a warm, dangerous shiver through her.
Outside, the last of the light had gone from the mountains.
But as she walked to her car, her heels sounded too loud in the empty lot. She looked toward the streetlamp—the one where the man in the canvas coat had stood just yesterday.
The town was small. The secrets were old. And Lila Grant was already editing the next chapter.
34
The Mercer House — Outside Sylva
The Mercer place sat on twenty-five acres outside Sylva, where the road curved along the foothills and the mountains rose blue and quiet beyond the trees.
It wasn’t flashy.
A wide brick house with deep porches and big windows looking out across the property. The land showed years of steady work—flower beds edged with stone, tall oaks shading the long gravel drive that curved past a small pond before reaching the house.
Behind the house sat a swimming pool bordered by smooth flagstone and neat hedges, the water catching the late afternoon sun.
The house itself had been built nearly forty years ago.
David Mercer Sr. had built it for his wife with his own crew, back when the construction company was still a handful of trucks and a dream.
