It can be as hard to let go of a much-loved house as it is a closely held conviction.
—HAMMER GIRL BLOG
Grayson ran his fingers through the kitten’s white fur. The dank scent of mud rose from the small body, and he waited for Ellie to say something. For a second he’d thought she might even yell. Her face had reddened, and the muscles in her jaw flexed.
She took a gulp of her coffee and choked. “Hot!” She fanned her face with her hand. “Are you going to investigate him? What if he took Mac? He’d have access to a boat, and he could have transferred her from her ship to that vessel.”
“I already thought of that. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”
“What’s wrong with tonight?”
The woman was worse than his physical therapist who was determined to work the limp out of Grayson’s leg. “He’s still out to sea.” He eyed her over the rim of his coffee cup. Her light-brown curls were in disarray, and she’d removed her glasses, which made her look even more attractive.
She rose and paced the fluffy aqua rug with her hands clenched. “But if he has Mac, we need to find her. There was all that blood . . .”
He should have realized her thoughts would head that direction. His eyes burned from the long day, and his neck ached from the flight. “I checked his schedule before I got here, and he’s out on duty until tomorrow morning. We can both get some rest, and I’ll talk to him as soon as he disembarks the boat.”
Her shoulders drooped. “I guess we have no choice.”
“I am trying to run down whether he owns any property around here, anywhere he might have stashed your sister. I should hear something tomorrow about that too.”
“You talked to the sheriff?” She reached down to the table and snatched up her glasses, then slipped them on.
“Do you even need those things?” He waved his hand at the computer. “You weren’t wearing them before when you were looking at the screen. I saw you through the window.” Color rushed to her cheeks, and he realized he’d made much too personal of a remark. “Sorry, forget I said that. It’s none of my business. And yes, I did speak to the sheriff. He has someone going through property tax records.”
“Good.” Her voice sounded strained, but she said nothing about the glasses. “Did you ask him about the picture and tell him what we found out about Korea?”
“I did. He didn’t have much to say about it, but I think he already suspects the picture is doctored. His technician will tell him soon.”
More to break the ice, he grabbed her laptop and lifted the lid to do a search himself on property records. The screen popped up to the Scrivener program, and his gaze landed on the folder’s title. “EMP bombs?” He stared at her. What was going on here?
Her face went a strangled shade of red. “Give me that computer!”
He silently passed it to her, but his suspicions rose. First stolen cocaine and now EMP bombs. Nasser sold drugs to support his terrorist organization. Was there more to Mackenzie’s involvement than he’d suspected? The hackles rose on his back at the thought of a terrorist attack on American soil. Maybe he was overreacting, but he had to see where this led.
The color washed out of her face, and she exhaled. “Mac uses this laptop, so I thought I’d check to see if I could find anything on it. It’s probably something to do with a lesson plan for her class.”
She didn’t meet his gaze, and he raised a brow. “What are you hiding?”
“Nothing! I haven’t even looked at the files yet.” She closed the computer. “I’ll let you know if I find anything about the cocaine.”
“Is there something you don’t want me to see?”
Ellie reached for her coffee. “I don’t know what all is on there yet, but I’m sure there’s nothing about any stolen cocaine. A quick look showed only lesson plans. I think you’ll need to look elsewhere for your missing cocaine. You surely have some idea who is behind this. If you knew Mac, you’d see how ludicrous it is. She’s a professor, not a drug dealer.”
She’d said something about Mac not even taking aspirin, and her unwavering belief in her sister left him with confusion. He hadn’t been able to find any evidence she was using drugs. Why would a language professor who didn’t do drugs get involved in selling them? Money? He hadn’t gotten a warrant yet to look at her bank account, but he would. There was more to this than met the eye.
He stared at her and felt a tug in his gut. She’d been through a lot this week. “You obviously love your sister a lot. Can you tell me about her? Do the two of you have any other siblings?”
She hesitated, then reached for the kitten. “We did, but our younger sister . . . died. Alicia drowned when she was four.”
“I’m so sorry. That had to have been hard.”
She gave a jerky nod. “I don’t talk about it much, and I don’t even know why I’m telling you now. Maybe so you understand how important Mac is to me. Sh-She’s all I have left. Our mom killed herself after Alicia’s death, and Dad just kind of checked out. He was there physically and taught us what he had to, but there was always something missing. Especially toward me, since it was my fault Alicia died.”
“What happened?”
She didn’t look at him and continued to focus on the kitten. “I was thirteen and babysitting Alicia. Mom had to run to the grocery store, and I was supposed to be keeping an eye on Alicia.” Her head came up, and her mouth flattened. “And I was. One of my friends was there, and we’d gone into the house for a minute to grab a soft drink. I thought Alicia was behind us, but when we came back out, I saw her in the water. I dove in right away and pulled her out, but I couldn’t get her to breathe. My friend went to call 911, and I kept trying to get her to wake up.” Her voice broke, and she swallowed.
“I’m sorry. She didn’t make it?”
Her fingers twisted a curl, and she shook her head. “The paramedics tried to revive her too. She was pronounced dead at the hospital. My mom went kind of crazy. She hated me and wouldn’t talk to me. Two weeks later she killed herself.”
He winced. Double guilt for her to swallow. “It wasn’t your fault.”
She bit her lip. “Yes, yes, it was. If I’d been playing with her, really looking after her, I could have kept her from jumping in.”
“It was an accident, Ellie. Accidents happen.”
The golden lights in her eyes shimmered through tears as she lifted her head and stared at him. “I feel like I failed Mac too. I should have noticed she wasn’t herself.”
He leaned forward. “What had she been doing?” Pushing her for answers felt wrong, but he had a feeling she was finally about to reveal something about Mackenzie’s behavior.
She blinked and looked away. “Just what I said—not herself. Kind of irritable.”
Which could mean nothing or everything.
He looked around the house. “Did Mackenzie stay here a lot?”
“Quite often. She has her own room here.”
“Could I see it?” He saw the indecision in her eyes. “I can get a court order, Ellie.”
She bit her lip. “There’s nothing here to see, but I’ll show you.”
Ellie hadn’t been upstairs in several days. Two bedrooms, one on either side, opened off the wide hallway. A bathroom at the end of the hall served both bedrooms.
She flipped on the light in the bedroom on the right, and the glow illuminated the queen bed with its new white quilt and aqua throw pillows. After pulling up all the old carpets, she’d refinished the oak floors to match the ones downstairs, then put down area rugs. The room still held the lingering scent of Mac’s shampoo and favorite pumpkin candle.
Grayson followed her into the room and looked around. “It almost looks like she lived here.”
“She left clothes here and some of her books.” She indicated the white bookcase on the right side of the bed. “She’s a big Stephen King fan as you can tell.”
Seeing Mac’s things here left a boulder lodged in her throat. Would her sister ever pull out her well-worn copy of The Stand again or curl up in the upholstered armchair with her computer? She stepped to the closet and opened the door to the small walk-in space. Floor-to-ceiling shelves lined the back wall, and clothing hung on either side of the closet.
“Mac’s a neatnik, and she puts most everything in the closet.”
She caught the scent of Mac’s light floral perfume, Daisy, on her clothes, and her vision blurred. She blinked until she could see again, then moved to the shelving. Boxes, games, and more books resided back here as well as seldom-used toiletries like blue nail polish and a foot bath. Sometimes she wondered why Mac hadn’t just moved in with her since she’d brought so many of her things. Her sister had a loft apartment in the downtown area, but Ellie had never liked the cold, featureless space. Mac evidently didn’t either.
Grayson joined her in front of the shelves. “You mind if I look through the closet?”
It wouldn’t do any good to object. “Go ahead.”
She watched him step into the walk-in closet and look at the shelves. Her gaze was caught by the family treasure box. It was a large wooden box with an ornately carved picture of a tall ship on the lid. She reached for it and held it to her chest.
“What’s that?”
She lifted her chin at the suspicion in his voice. “It holds our keepsakes. I thought I’d sift through it just to feel close to Mac.”
“Mind if I have a look?”
She hugged it closer. “Absolutely not! It’s just personal stuff.”
“You never know where your sister might have hidden something important. Unless you’re afraid she’s really guilty?”
Even though she knew he was manipulating her, she thrust it at him. “Fine, take a look through old family pictures and keepsakes. Maybe you’ll see Mac would never do anything illegal.”
He took the box and carried it out of the closet to the bedroom. After setting it on the bed, he lifted the lid and looked inside, then lifted out the jumble of contents. An old locket of their mother’s, their grandfather’s pocket watch, both of their diaries from when they were teenagers, tickets to various music venues over the years, and pictures of them together from childhood.
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until he got down to the bottom of the box.
Several yellowed newspapers were folded up in the bottom. Ellie picked up the top one and unfolded it. The front page of the Lavender Tides Journal featured a picture of her and her little sister at the park. She was swinging Alicia, and the four-year-old wore a wide smile and an expression of bliss. Ellie’s breath seized in her lungs at the unexpected snapshot of a time long past.
Though she wanted to thrust it back in the box, she forced herself to scan the article about her sister’s death. It wasn’t anything she didn’t relive every day.
Grayson inhaled as he was reading the article over her shoulder. “When did your parents get back?”
She forced herself to answer. “I can’t really remember. Hours later. Mom was gone to the store much longer than I’d thought, and I never asked where Dad was, but he didn’t get home until after she did. One of the neighbors drove me to the hospital and then back home to wait on them. I tried calling the grocery store, but the clerk didn’t seem to know who she was. It was a new employee, I think. I didn’t know who to call to find my dad, so I called his best friend, but no one answered. I can’t remember the time, but I know it was dark by the time they got home.”
“You were by yourself while you waited?”
She shook her head. “My best friend and her parents stayed with me and Mac.” The horror of that entire day stole the strength from her voice. “Mom about went crazy when she got home. I knew I deserved every bit of her anger, though.”
She put the papers back inside the box, then reached for the other items. “There’s nothing here, like I said.”
Nothing but the pain of her worst memory.