LITMIR.BIZ

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managed for Gus and Ginny. They were like family to Helen, and she’d always affectionately called them aunt and uncle. The ranch was her home, workplace of her overprotective brother Liam, her adopted brothers Mitch Whitehorse and Chad Jaggert. Nothing could happen to her on this property.

      But Fiona Ross was dead, just like Trish, and now she couldn’t ignore the notion that the two were connected. Helen’s conscience began its familiar badgering.

       Why didn’t you ask Fiona where she was going that day? Why she was distracted? Worried?

      It was the list of questions Fiona’s brother Sergio had flung at her the day of Fiona’s funeral. Since then, he’d rebuffed every effort she’d made to reach out to the children, to try and connect in some small way with the little girls who’d lost their mother on her watch. Her cards were returned, her phone calls unanswered. He blamed her, but not as much as she blamed herself.

      Helen tiptoed to the window and looked out into a thick screen of oak and pine. The branches dripped with moisture from the brewing January storm that swept in from the ocean across the acres of ranch property. She could make out nothing sinister in the damp night, no monsters or bogeymen.

      Maybe it was her imagination stoking her paranoia. Certainly that seemed to be the opinion of Mark Farraday, the police chief standing in for Danny Patron who had taken a leave of absence. Chief Farraday merely raised a skeptical eyebrow when she’d presented Fiona’s note.

      Helen had begun to doubt herself. Could it be mere coincidence that Fiona had scrawled that message just before she was killed?

       Snap.

      Now the sound came from the rear. She gulped in a breath. Surely not, more likely it was outside, some animal looking for shelter. Still, she gripped the phone in her pocket. Should she call the police? And tell them what? She’d heard a noise?

      She shook her head. Any other time she would have texted her brother Liam, but he was away with his new bride Maggie on their honeymoon. Chad? The poor guy was probably exhausted after assisting the vet all day with inoculating the herd.

       Big-girl time, Helen. Go get in your car and drive away.

      She’d reached for the front doorknob when a crash of breaking glass and a sudden whoosh of air rushed through the house along with a bang that shook the walls. She screamed and yanked the door open and was halfway to her car when she realized what must have happened. The mangled edge of a tree limb protruded from the shattered glass. A branch from the aged oak had come loose and crashed through the side bedroom window. It took several steadying breaths before she could laugh at her own terror.

      No fancy double-paned windows here, the cottage was outdated, damaged by an earthquake that had rumbled across the region some months prior.

      Teeth gritted, Helen retraced her steps. No reason to leave glass strewn everywhere. The very idea of it aggravated her need for tidiness, which Liam said bordered on obsession. She tried to flick on the lights. Nothing. The power had gone out due to the howling storm. Instead she activated her phone light and grabbed the broom and dustpan from the hall closet, bumping it closed with her hip.

      Cold winter air barreled through the fractured window, chilling her fingers, snaking up her spine. She cleaned up as best she could, dumping the broken glass in a trash bin under the kitchen sink.

      Holding the dustpan and broom, she went to the closet to return the items.

      Fright gripped her stomach. The closet door was a few inches ajar, the door she’d closed tight not a few moments before.

      Her skin pimpled with goose bumps.

      The wind, it had to be. But the wind would blow against the door and close it, not open it from the inside. She tried to reason with her trembling nerves.

       It just came open, that’s all. Old structure, unsettled foundation.

      She blew out a breath. Did she used to be a nervous Nellie? Scared of her own shadow? With conviction, she reached out to pull it all the way open when it shot wide, the door cracking into her forehead, sending her to the floor.

      Sergio chafed against the seat belt. He longed for his motorcycle, to feel the unfettered freedom of a V-twin engine and an endless stretch of open road. But motorcycles were wildly impractical for transporting a pair of almost-three-year-old girls. He still felt the stab of pain at selling his beloved bike. The used SUV that now took him down the country road was sensible, safe...completely boring. It was a humdrum ride, complete with two empty car seats at the moment, strapped snugly into the back since the girls were safely at the hotel with their nanny. At least his ride didn’t have a stick-figure-family decal on the rear window. There really was no sticker that could adequately capture the misfit family he was so desperately trying to hold together anyway, Uncle Sergio and his sister’s daughters. No, his daughters now.

      Daddy. Their sole provider. Responsible for everything from trimming their toenails to encouraging their empathy. That last one was tricky, since he wasn’t sure he had any himself. Not anymore.

      When the tension seized his gut, he tried to reassure himself.

      Laurel and Lucy were okay, weren’t they? Mostly happy and healthy? So maybe he didn’t always know exactly how to handle it when they cried or lost their favorite snuggle toys, but he’d weathered the storms as they came and tried to keep his sister’s memory alive for them as best he could. He’d given up on telling them much about their father, the man who’d died of an aneurysm just before they were born. That had been tragic enough, but to lose their mother when they were only a few months old?

      The relentless barrage of their needs sometimes made him long for his work, diving in bottomless oceans, alone, with nothing but the sound of his own breathing in his Scuba regulator. But getting his PI license meant he could be there for the girls, and their needs trumped his. “And don’t you worry, girls,” he muttered to himself. “Your mama’s killer is going to pay.”

      A gust of wind sent leaves scuttling across his windshield and snapped him out of his reverie. He figured he might have strayed onto private property, but he had seen no sign and there hadn’t been a fence barring the way. He wasn’t there to make trouble, just to lay eyes on the place. In his rare imaginative moments, Sergio sometimes fancied himself a spider, so intricate was the web he’d spun, the feelers he’d put into place to solve the mystery of Fiona’s murder.

      Those feelers had begun to vibrate when he’d learned that Helen Pike had gone to the cops with a note she’d found from Fiona.

      Trish. Proof.

      Find out who still has theirs.

      It meant nothing to him. Was Helen making something up in her mind? Imagining a connection between what happened to Trish all those years ago and his sister? Maybe Helen’s own guilt had finally gotten the better of her. He felt no pity. She should have listened to Fiona, gone with her on whatever crazy investigation she’d hinted at in her last message to him.

      Sorry I missed your call, Serg. Going to talk to Helen about something that’s bothering me. She’ll help me. Some help. Helen admitted to him that she’d put Fiona off, busy with her duties managing her fancy hotel. Helen’s tear-washed jade eyes had not cooled his ire one bit. His sister was gone, his nieces left orphaned with only a hard-bitten, desperate uncle to care for them.

      He had a fleeting thought that he hadn’t reminded Laurel and Lucy to brush their teeth. Yet another thing he’d have to hope the nanny followed through on.

       You’re a sad excuse for a parent, Serg.

      A cottage came into view that had to be the one he sought. Parked outside was a van with Roughwater Lodge emblazoned on the side. As he opened the car door, his nose picked up the clue before his brain did.

      Smoke.

      A fire in the fireplace?

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