What Are You Afraid Of? (The Agency #2)(58)

“I said you can go first.”

He muttered a curse, stepping back as his gaze swept the barren meadows and thick lines of trees that hid them from any neighbors.

No doubt he was deciding that there was no good option in such a remote area. He couldn’t deposit her in a crowded café while he went to check on the house. Which meant that she was either left alone in the truck, or she went with him.

“Fine.” He reached to pluck the key from her fingers. “Let’s do this.”

He unlocked the door and shoved it open. They stepped into the shadowed living room, instantly surrounded in a stale gloom. Out of habit, Carmen moved to pull open the heavy drapes, allowing the sunshine to spill through the window.

The darkness was dispersed to reveal the worn carpeting that had faded to a dull brown, and the furniture that was covered with the plastic that her grandmother insisted was a necessary protection. Carmen wasn’t sure what posed a danger to the sofa and chairs, but she hadn’t dared to remove the stiff coating. She’d been afraid the cushions might disintegrate if they were exposed to air.

She had added a flat-screen TV that was set on the mantel, and bought a new lamp, but those were the only changes that had been made in the past thirty years.

“Does it look like anything has been disturbed?” Griff asked her, his gaze sweeping over the tidy room.

“No.”

He led her into the narrow kitchen that had the usual linoleum floor and white-painted cabinets. She crossed to the built-in china cabinet and squatted down to pull open the bottom drawer.

“My grandmother’s silver is here,” she said, opening the velvet-lined case where the silverware was kept, along with a matching sugar bowl and creamer. She closed the drawer and straightened to peer through the glass of the china cabinet. The antique dishes and figurines were still there, covered in a light layer of dust. “There’s really nothing else that might have been worth any money.”

He poked his head into the mudroom, which led to the back porch. “Is there a basement?” he asked.

“No.” She waved a hand toward the window over the sink, which offered a view of the backyard. There was a large mound at one end of the lawn with a wooden door. “There’s a root cellar where my grandmother kept the vegetables she canned, but it doesn’t connect to the house.”

“Where’s the attic?”

She turned to leave the kitchen, only to roll her eyes as he darted in front of her, clearly still concerned that there might be some madman lurking in shadows.

“Through the living room and to the right,” she directed, following him into her grandparents’ bedroom.

It was a large room, with windows that overlooked the front yard. The wooden floors had been worn over the years, but the planks had been lovingly waxed and polished by her grandmother. The sturdy furniture had been carved by some distant ancestor, and probably weighed as much as a bulldozer. Which meant that it’d been hauled into the room a hundred years ago and never moved. There was a worn quilt spread across the mattress and homemade drapes that framed the windows.

A bitter sense of pain sliced through Carmen. Her grandparents had been all she had. Now they were gone. It didn’t seem fair.

Sensing Griff ’s steady gaze, she gave a faint shake of her head and crossed the floor toward the narrow door at the back of the room. Someday she was going to have to come to terms with her loss. Otherwise this place was going to end up another rotting farmhouse that would collapse into oblivion.

Grabbing the rusty doorknob, she tugged on it. Then tugged again, and again.

“Sorry,” she muttered, when the door abruptly flew open with a cloud of dust. She coughed, waving her hand in front of her face. “This hasn’t been opened in years. After I moved in my grandfather converted the loft of the barn into a storage area. That’s where they put most of the stuff from the attic.”

He moved next to her, peering at the steep flight of wooden steps.

“What stuff?”

“Christmas decorations. Old pots and pans,” she said. “And every work of art I ever brought home from school, including the turkey I made out of dry macaroni.”

His lips twitched. “You made a turkey out of macaroni?”

“Don’t scoff. I’m multitalented.”

“I believe you.” He paused before sending her a questioning glance. “Are you going up?”

Her brows lifted in surprise. “You’ll let me go first?”

He shrugged. “There might be bats.”

She rolled her eyes before heading up the stairs, which were too narrow for more than one person at a time. The man was willing to go into the house first when he thought there might be a killer waiting for them, but he was afraid of a bat?

She reached the planked floor of the attic, but before she could move into the thick darkness that shrouded the space, she felt Griff ’s arm wrap around her waist.

“Is there a light?” he demanded.

“There’s a bulb hanging from the rafters with a string attached to it,” she told him.

“Hold on,” he said. “I’ll find it.”

There was the squeak of old boards as Griff moved cautiously forward. Then Carmen heard a faint click before a small circle of light appeared in the center of the room.

She was on the point of moving to join Griff when he abruptly muttered a curse.