Ryan is not someone I can hand this to and I hate that he looked at me like I could. I hate that Tristan feeds me things without asking and that Jack lets me have my unfinished sentences and that Archer, who doesn’t trust me and has said so, grabbed my wrist not to threaten mebut because he didn’t want me to leave.
I hate that it’s working.
Whatever it is, whatever the pack is doing, it’s working. I can feel it. The edges of my perimeter softening in ways I haven’t authorized.
I sit on Doris Harrow’s very comfortable bed.
I am not crying. I don’t cry. I am simply sitting in the dark with my jacket on and the small tin trophy in my hand, pressing its edges into my palm, thinking about a few days ago when I drove into this valley and my only problem was a bank heist I didn’t commit.
Now I have a bank heist I didn’t commit and four men whose orbit I cannot seem to leave and a pack bond that shouldn’t apply to me reaching through the air of this town like a tide pulling at my ankles.
I almost told him.
I squeeze the trophy until the edge of it bites.
I am not doing this. I am not going to be the person who trusts the wrong people twice in a row. Amber was the wrong person. I know exactly what the wrong person looks like now. I know how trust getsbuilt from the small kindnesses, the consistent warmth, the making-you-feel-seen that turns out to be maneuvering.
Except…
Except Amber was maneuvering. There was always something she wanted from me. Always a transaction somewhere under the warmth, always a position she was building toward.
I have been inside the pack’s orbit for less than a week and I have not been able to locate what they want. This is the part I cannot calculate my way around, and I’ve tried.
I pull off my jacket. I put the trophy on the nightstand. I lie down on the pine-scented bed and I look at the ceiling. I think about Ryan sayingstarting to know you.In the tone of someone with genuine feeling.
I hate that I almost trusted them.
I hate that I still want to.
These are not the same thing and tonight I can’t figure out which one to be more scared of.
I close my eyes. I don’t sleep. I’ve wasted enough time in this small town doing nothing when I should be fighting to clear my name.
* * *
In the morning, I leave Doris Harrow’s with a mission. I must find Amber’s accomplice. If I can do that, perhaps I can find enough evidence to submit anonymously to the police. It’s my best shot at ending this nightmare.
I find the private investigator by accident. This is, in retrospect, exactly how you’d expect to find a private investigator in Sweetwater Valley. Not through a directory or a recommendation or any of the logical channels, but by nearly walking into her sandwich board.
The sandwich board is pale blue, hand-painted in neat cursive letters, and reads:
MARGARET FINCHDiscreet Inquiries & Curious MattersEst. 1987Walk-Ins Welcome (Please knock. Mind the cat hair.)
I stand on the cobblestones and process what I’m seeing.Discreet Inquiries and Curious Matters.In Sweetwater Valley. Of course.
I knock.
“Come in, it’s open,” says a voice from somewhere inside, and I open the door.
The office needs a moment for me to take it all in.
The room is the size of a large closet that has developed aspirations. It occupies what might have been a storage room attached to the side of the bookshop, accessible via its own street-facing door, and every inch of it has been deployed with the thoroughness of someone who has strong opinions about how a space should feel and the commitment to execute those opinions completely.
Bookshelves line every wall that isn’t a window or a door, floor to ceiling, the books arranged not by any system I can identify but clearly by some internal logic that makes sense to Margaret Finch. Novels, reference books, what appears to be an extensive collection of true crime, and—taking up an entire shelf—a row of identical forest green journals that have years written on their spines in silver marker going back to 1987.
Thirty-nine years of journals.
A desk occupies the center of the room with theauthority of something that has been in that exact position for decades and intends to remain there. It is buried, not in mess, but in organized accumulation. Files, folders, a magnifying glass on a stand, a cup of something that steams gently, and a lamp with a rose-colored shade that throws the whole room in warm pink light.
