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Of course, it couldn’t be that easy. She hadn’t expected top secret documents and a map of Baines’s house to spill out, but come on. A little luck would have been nice.
After another peek at the door, she pulled out the long middle drawer. Did she have to worry about fingerprints? Just in case, she picked up a pen and used the end to move the contents around. Nothing but the usual paper clips and notepads in there. Breath mints. Random business cards. A key to... something. She grabbed it and immediately regretted it.
Okay, time to speed up.She opened the drawers on the left.File folders. So many file folders. A quick run through the labels didn’t turn up any names she recognized. Fine. Now the right side. And . . . bingo! A locked drawer.
She took out the key and opened the lock. A tiny voice in the back of her head said getting in had been too easy, but she kept going. Diaries? No, they were calendars. She tried to think if those would be helpful. A few small notebooks. She paged through one, and the scribbles weren’t in sentences. Numbers and dates only.
The lack of incriminating evidence explained why the key had been so easy to find. This isn’t where they hid things that needed hiding. There wasn’t much of a need to lock down stuff that didn’t matter.
She reached around, patted the inside of the drawer. Felt around, let her fingers smooth over every edge as she snuck looks at that damn door. Under it? Nope. Behind it? She felt... something. She winced at the thudding sound as she slipped the drawer out to get better traction.
Tape and another key.Great.
She shoved the drawer back in and jumped at the unexpected thump that sounded more like a bang when she closed it. “Shit!”
She froze, half expecting Retta to walk in with a gun in her hand. A few seconds ticked by, and the doorway stayed clear. She heard the muffled sound of Retta’s laugh and realized the call raged on. “Thanks for staying in touch with your parents, boys.”
Jessa stood up and looked around the room with the keypressed against her palm. Something in this room required a key. A small hard-to-find key.
Paintings. Furniture. Bookshelves. Her first thought was a hidden safe, but she hoped not, because how in the world would she find that? It didn’t look like a luggage or safety-deposit key. They had a few outbuildings on the property, but she couldn’t exactly ask for a tour of the potting shed.
“This is ridiculous.” She went back to the desk, hoping something obvious would come to her.
The key had to matter, because why tape it to the back of a drawer?Importantdidn’t mean the hidden lock was in this room. She didn’t know what to try next.
“What are you doing?”
That voice. Retta. In the doorway.
The nightmare scenario. The worst possible ending to this day. Jessa struggled to form words, to come up with a good explanation—any explanation—for standing behind the desk.
Then Jessa remembered that weird little notebook she’d picked up. Where had she put it?
Chapter Sixty-Three
Gabby
Natalie and the fire.
Gabby had spent years avoiding and outrunning this topic. For a long time, she’d thought the secret would burn through her and seep out. But she’d kept it tucked away, separate from every other part of her life. Disconnected from her thoughts. When her mind did wander into the shadows and dip into that day and what she’d heard, she kicked the memory away. Out of the light. Now Liam was trying to reach in and yank it out.
“Gabby? Answer me.”
Telling would ruin everything. Raise questions. Pile on more doubt. Make him hate her. Once she unlocked this box, she’d never be able to slam it shut again.
“The detective is trying to divide us. Work on our loyalty to each other.” And that was true. Detective Schone knew the truth . . . which seemed impossible, or she guessed. She could have had access to attorney records, though Gabby couldn’t imagine Baines sharing any part of this topic with anyone. Itgave people power over him, serious power, and he never conceded the high ground.
“Why would she do that?” Liam asked.
“If you don’t have my support, you’re weaker. But if we’re fighting, it plays into her wrong assumptions about us.” Gabby tried to stop talking. She didn’t want to tiptoe through any of this, and here she was stomping her way around the facts.
“Fill me in on the assumptions.”
Gabby went with a version of the truth. The pieces were right, but if he fit them together he’d get the wrong picture. “She tried to get me to agree with her about you and Baines being in a fight. About you killing him. She told me to turn on you to save myself.”
Liam shook his head. “Why do you need saving?”
That’s not what she expected him to grab on to. She needed him angry about the violation of his privacy, not standing there all stoic, as if waiting for her to hurt him again. “The thing... You know, what she said. The thing about us. Together. Our past and what that meant. What we might have done. That we came up with a plan. For Baines. I don’t know why we would, and we didn’t, but... To hurt Baines and then kill him.”
