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That cold, heavy weight instantly drops on my shoulders the second I enter the attic. It’s like in those cartoons when a piano drops out of the sky and lands on top of an unsuspecting person.
“Okay, hurry the fuck up, I don’t like it up here,” Daya says, her voice tight with fear. It’s crawling across my bones too, sending my heart racing. Yet, heat slithers through my muscles, settling low in the pit of my stomach.
I use the flashlight on my phone to search through the walls. I start with where I found the last note, but all that’s left are cobwebs and spiders.
I make my way over each wall, pressing on the wood paneling in hopes of finding one of them loose. It’s not until I get close to the mirror that I find one. The wood rattles beneath my palms, and with the heavy feeling surrounding us, I waste no time ripping the wood from the wall.
I bounce the beam of light around in several different directions, finding nothing but more bugs and webs. I almost give up, until I see a flash of something shiny.
“I think I found something,” I announce excitedly.
“Thank fuck,” Daya mutters from behind me. I barely hear the words. Plunging my arm into the hole before I can consider the bugs, I grab at the piece, my hand closing around something plastic. I go to pull that out, but my hand grazes what feels like paper, so I make a grab for that too.
I swipe at my arm, cringing at the feel of cobwebs sticking to me. I don’t even look at my arm, I just keep brushing it off all while beelining for the steps.
“Let’s go,” I breathe, right before I’m nearly knocked on my ass from Daya pushing past me and running down the stairs.
Whatever is in my hand, it’s something big. I’m as sure of it as I am of the eyes on my back, watching me leave.
Slamming the attic door behind me, I lean against it and heave, shaking out the bone-chilling cold that seems to cling to me like glue.
“I’m never going up there again,” Daya says, panting.
“I don’t think I want to, either,” I say. Finally, I look down at my hand and see a Ziploc bag with a gold diamond encrusted Rolex in it and blood streaked across the plastic. And the note in my hand is a quick scrawl that says, “hide this, no one can know I did it. Remember that.”
“Holy shit,” I breathe.
“Let me see it. We can’t touch it or we’ll get fingerprints on it, but those have serial numbers. I can probably trace that back to its owner.”
We rush down into the kitchen, the demon residing in my attic forgotten. I find a pair of spare rubber gloves that Daya and I used when we were cleaning out the house. She snaps the gloves on and carefully pulls out the bloodied watch.
“I don’t want the blood to flake off, but I need to remove the bracelet in order to see the serial number,” she murmurs, handling the watch piece with care. “Do you have a thumbtack?”
I whip around and open up the junk drawer in my kitchen, confident I have one somewhere. After rummaging for a minute, I let loose a celebratory ah-ha and hand Daya a blue thumbtack.
It takes her a minute, but she finally gets the bracelet unhooked between the lugs of the watch.
“Motherfucker,” she curses.
“What?”
“Someone scratched at the serial number. It’s barely legible.”
Daya looks up at me, disappointment radiating from her green eyes. I deflate, a frown tugging my lips down in defeat.
“I’m not gonna give up. We’re getting this blood tested and I’m going to figure something out with this watch. Let me handle it?”
I nod, trusting Daya to figure it out. She’s incredibly intelligent, and her resources on finding out information are astronomical.
And then a light bulb goes off in my head. “In those pictures with Gigi, Frank was wearing that watch.”
I pick through all the papers scattered across the island until I find the small stack of photos.
“Same watch,” I reiterate, handing the pictures over. Daya peers down at the photos, a grin pulling her lips up.
“Now we just have to prove it.”
Chapter 37
