I turn to look over my shoulder and feel my jaw tighten and my eyes narrow.
It’s Lydia Walsh. She nearly stomped all over our investigation, but that’s not the reason I’m mad at her. I’m mad at her because she randomly showed up at my ex-boyfriend Greg’s hospital bed, discharged him somehow, and less than an hour later, he wound up dead. And she still has the nerve to proclaim her innocence.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“I'm here to see Millie,” she protests. The liar.
“You have no reason to be here,” I say. “You need to go.”
“I don't think that's your decision, Agent Griffin,” Lydia shoots back. “If you can come here to visit her, then I can, too.”
“I know exactly why you're here,” I snap. “And you need to stop.”
“What's going on in here?” Gloria asks, coming into the room and looking between Lydia and me with her eyebrows knitted together and a concerned expression in her eyes. “We don't need shouting on this floor. People are trying to recuperate.”
“I'm sorry,” I say. “Lydia, can you step outside and speak with me for a minute?”
“Sure,” Lydia replies coolly.
I look over at Millie. “I'll be right back.”
Millie nods, swallowing hard. Gloria fills her a glass of ice water and brings it over to her with a straw, standing by her side while she sips it. I feel guilty for upsetting her, but I can't just ignore what happened the day she was shot. As she walked across that parking lot, she told me she needed to talk to me about her brother. Only seconds later, the bullets tore through her, and she collapsed into my arms. While I tried to stop the bleeding, she told me to stop him.
She knows something. It's in there. I just have to help her find it. And get her to tell me.
"What. Are. You. Doing. Here?" I ask Lydia in a low, hissing whisper when we get out into the hallway.
"I'm visiting Millie and making sure she's alright," Lydia responds.
Her eyes flicker back in the direction of the door, and the muscles through my body tense up. In my mind, I can see her checking on Greg the same way. I still don't know exactly what happened the day he was discharged from the hospital and left with her. All I know is that he was supposed to wait there for me or another member of the team, and instead, he walked out with her. The surveillance footage showing him walking across the parking lot with her is the last image of him alive I ever saw.
He was dead mere hours later.
"You don't even know her," I say. "You never even spoke to her before she was shot."
Lydia seems to think about this for a few seconds, then her shoulders drop, and she lets out a sigh.
"I just want to help, Emma," she says.
"Help with what?"
"The investigation."
"You are not a part of this investigation, Lydia. You need to stop interfering," I say.
"I'm not interfering. I want to be a part of it. I think I could be a valuable asset. I do know a few things about digging into cold cases," she says. "And I've already found out a few interesting things. Did you know Lilith Duprey, the woman who lives behind the cornfield where the bodies were found, hasn't always lived in Harlan?"
"Yes, I did know that. I found that out when we found out that she owns the house in Salt Valley, where Mason Goldman has been living."
"Right. But she also hasn't always lived in Salt Valley. As a matter of fact, she has never lived this far away from a city. She wasn't exactly a nature girl in her younger days."
I blink, almost incredulous at what this woman is trying to tell me.
"So?" I ask.
"So, why would a woman who has always lived in cities and is used to the finer things in life suddenly decide to settle in the middle of nowhere?"
I take a step closer to her. "Lydia, stop. This is serious. It's not a game. You need to back off and let the real investigators handle this before you hurt the investigation."
"Fine," she says, holding up her hands in a show of surrender and stepping back from me. "I just thought I could help. I'll leave."
"Thank you," I say, turning back toward Millie's room.
"Oh," she adds, making me turn around. "I meant to ask you. What was the key for?"
"What key?" I ask.
"The key Greg gave me to give to you."
Chapter Five
Those words stop me still. It takes a second before I'm able to really process them and respond.
"Which key? Why did Greg give to you to give to me? I don't know what you're talking about. You never gave me a key," I say.
"That's because I don't have it anymore," Lydia says.
"What do you mean you don't have it anymore?" I ask, stepping toward her again. "Where is it?"
"I gave it to the police when I talked to them about Greg's death," she says.
"Why the hell would you give it to the police?" I demand, my voice creeping higher again.
Lydia recoils slightly from my reaction. "He gave it to me the day he left the hospital. I told you we had made plans to get together, but he said there was something he had to do first. He gave me the key and said just in case, to make sure you got it. I didn't know how to get it to you, then when the police questioned me, I told them about it. They asked me for it, and I gave it to them. I figured they would make sure you got it because you were working with them."
"I wasn't working with them," I say angrily. "I was working with the FBI. The local police department didn't do shit about his murder and still haven't. How could you just let him hand you a key like that and walk away? He said he
