The Last Invitation (72)

He didn’t move. “Tell me the truth about the fire.”





Chapter Sixty-Two

Jessa




Jessa was in hour four of running through scenarios and case examples with Retta. So far, getting invited to full membership with this group was harder than getting through law school.

They’d been locked in the office Retta and Earl shared at their home for most of the afternoon. Not the most enjoyable way to spend a Saturday, but Jessa couldn’t exactly say no. Retta insisted this was part of the process for a potential new member of the foundation behind the Foundation, or whatever the group’s official title was. Jessa was too tired to ferret that out.

Retta left to take a call with her sons. Something about a family trip over the holidays. The break trapped Jessa in a room full of books when she really wanted to find the kitchen and get something to eat.

Talking with Retta burned through Jessa’s reserves. The granola from this morning was long gone. The anxiety and fear of being wrong stole her energy. So did the control needed to not ask about Gabby and Baines.

Gabby. Jessa wanted to put her old law-school chum and her problems in a box on the shelf and forget them. Gabby’s problems were not her problems . . . but they did overlap. Sort of.

If the group called for Baines’s death, a solution Jessa believed should only be used for the most extreme cases, she couldn’t make the choice make sense. Retta lying about it only made her want to dig for more details.

Damn it, Gabby.

Jessa glanced at the open door to the hallway then back to the desk. No. She couldn’t. She didn’t even know what she’d be looking for. But still . . .

She walked around to the desk chair and pulled it out of the way. Another look to the doorway, but no one stood there. She listened, straining to pick up a hint of footsteps or talking. When she didn’t hear either, she brushed her hand over the top of the desk, shifting one stack of papers then another. Looked like trade magazines and other nonsense but nothing important.

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 key pressed 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? Important didn’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.