A hawk cried out, and I looked up. Its shadow crossed my face as it circled lazily. I drew in my knees and thought of Joanna, my courageous and funny friend, now silenced. I thought of Danny, who asked for my help, and whom I also failed. The shadow of the hawk passed over me again. I felt the tears come.
After I’d had a good cry, I wiped my face and looked once more at the village and the sunny sky.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “so very, very sorry.”
A breeze ruffled my hair. The sun warmed me, and the shadow of the hawk crossed me for the third time. A great weight lifted. I knew what I had to do.
I had found Joanna’s killer. If I had failed her, I had done my best to make things right. Not so with my husband. Danny had asked for my help and I’d put him off. Then he was dead, and the man in jail for the crime swore he didn’t do it. I could hear his voice in my head now.
“He was alive when I left him, I swear it. I didn’t hit him that hard, and only the one time. I didn’t kill him. Someone else was there after me. I swear it.”
I believed him.
I am ashamed to say I always had. Too many things didn’t add up, but as long as my secret was safe, I didn’t care.
I cared now. It was time to find the truth. I would have to be so careful. I didn’t know who to trust. But I knew where to begin. How it would end was anybody’s guess, but that no longer mattered to me. All that mattered was the truth.
I stood. The hawk flashed past me, in a silent dive toward its prey. I walked to the trail. Turning my back to the sun, I stepped into the welcoming shadows. The trees whispered as the darkness closed around me. I inhaled the green-scented air and relaxed into the forest’s cool embrace, the soothing caress of leaves as I followed my secret path downward. My mind hummed with possibilities and questions.
I felt more alive than I had in years.
The game was afoot.
Author Biography
M. E. is currently a full-time librarian who started out in retail merchandising. Her first job was as an assistant buyer at Lord & Taylor, where her glamour position involved office space in the basement of the Fifth Avenue store. After twelve years of mergers, consolidations, and moves around the country, she went to graduate school and got a Master of Library Science degree. She has been in the information business ever since, working for public libraries small and large. Originally from the Connecticut shoreline, she has never lost her love of quaint small towns, big cities, and fashion, so she indulges that in her writing. A life-long lover of mystery fiction, M. E. currently lives and works in Florida.
This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real or actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by Macaire Hill
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crooked Lane Books, an imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Crooked Lane Books and its logo are trademarks of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication data available upon request.
ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-64385-694-0
ISBN (ebook): 978-1-64385-695-7
Cover design by Melanie Sun
Printed in the United States.
www.crookedlanebooks.com
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First Edition: April 2021
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