But why can’t I come with you?
Because you can’t! I don’t expect you to understand any of this right now, but I hope someday you’ll look back and realize I’m doing what I think is best for both of us. Your daddy leaving the way he did made me realize that I have to get out, too, else I’ll be stuck in this godforsaken town for the rest of my life. I’m young. Still pretty, some say. I’m sorry, Nikki, but I need more out of life than being your mama.
All these years later and Nikki still had a hard time dealing with what had come next. The pleading and sobbing. The way she’d run down the driveway behind the departing car. She’d been too old to make such a spectacle of herself, or so her grandmother had told her. As painful as it was to remember that day, Nikki had learned a valuable lesson. She would never again give anyone that kind of power over her.
The memory flitted away as her attention snapped back to the present. A sound, a movement... Something had startled her from the past.
For a fleeting moment, Nikki had the uncanny sensation that someone watched her from the shadows. Her mind flashed back to the Ruins and to the way Adam Thayer had stared at her so intently. As if he knew her. Knew things about her. No way he could, of course. There was a reason she kept to herself.
Then she thought about the person they’d spotted on the bank. The way he’d hunkered in the shadows, watching the water, until Adam had turned on his flashlight. Something strange really was going on in Belle Pointe. Nikki just couldn’t figure out how she and her missing journal fit into the puzzle.
Rubbing her bare arms, she scoured the landscape. No one was there. Not the man from the lake. Certainly not Adam Thayer. Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling of invisible eyes upon her.
It’s just those old memories.
She rose and went quickly down the steps into the garden. Her backyard was small. Even with the encroaching darkness, she would be able to spot anyone lurking in the shadows or behind a bush. Nothing was amiss. No intruders. No Peeping Toms.
Circling the garden, she peered behind trees and trellises until satisfied that she was alone. She started to return to the house when she noticed the rear gate ajar. Her property backed up to a wooded area with a footpath on the other side of the creek for joggers and walkers. Nikki was in the habit of keeping the gate bolted so that no one would be tempted to take a shortcut through her yard to the street. She wasn’t so much worried for her safety as she valued her privacy.
Someone must have climbed over the fence, unfastened the bolt and then stepped back through to the path without properly closing the gate. Why anyone would do such a thing, she had no idea. Maybe a kid had kicked a ball into her yard or someone had come over the fence chasing a cat. Or maybe the sensation of being watched wasn’t so misplaced after all. Maybe someone had been standing just behind the gate, peering through the crack, while she showered and dressed on the back porch.
Revulsion rose like bile in her throat even as she told herself she was letting her imagination get the better of her. She was stressed and not thinking straight. Who wouldn’t be? Her friend and mentor lay on a stone-cold slab in the morgue, cause of death still pending. It was certainly possible, perhaps even likely, that he’d suffered a medical event that had precipitated the overturned boat and his spill into the lake. But that didn’t explain his sudden change of plans. That didn’t explain the hidden watch or the person lurking at the lake the night before. What if he had met with foul play? What if the killer, for whatever reason, now had Nikki in his sights?
You’re being ridiculous.
But her pulse wouldn’t settle even after she latched the gate and retreated to the safety of her back porch. She made sure the screen and wooden doors were both locked and the windows were all closed before she finally went inside the house.
Everything appeared just as she’d left it that morning and yet nothing was really the same. She went through the motions of checking the refrigerator for dinner, finally settling on a turkey sandwich, but the doorbell interrupted her preparations. Drying her hands, she hurried into the foyer to glance out the sidelight. She rarely had visitors. Except for the occasional dinner with an acquaintance or work colleague, she spent her evenings alone in the garden with a book and her phone.
Lila Wilkes stood on the front porch, clutching a glass pie plate in both hands. Nikki quickly stepped back from the window. Maybe if she pretended she wasn’t home, her caller would go away.
Nikki had nothing against the woman—quite the contrary. Lila Wilkes was considered something of a guardian angel in Belle Pointe, always the first to offer a comforting smile and a helping hand in times of sickness and death. Like Dr. Nance, her reputation and regard had created a larger-than-life persona and yet her physical appearance was completely nondescript. She might have been anybody from anywhere with her short gray bob and khaki capris.
Deciding she’d probably been spotted through the window, Nikki pulled the door open. “Mrs. Wilkes! What are you doing here?”
The woman said warmly, “Oh, do call me Lila. I’ve been a widow for more than thirty years. I don’t even feel like Mrs. Wilkes anymore.” Her hair was tucked behind her ears, displaying flower earrings that matched the floral print of her top and the sparkly embellishments on her sandals.
“What brings you by...?” Nikki trailed off awkwardly. Even with permission, she had a hard time addressing the woman
