Chapter 1 - The Name on the Telephone
“Because she said she was calling Mr. Vale.”
Evie said it quietly, as if she had done something impolite.
Across from her, Rowan went completely still.
Adrian Vale had been his family’s attorney for twenty-three years. He handled property purchases, private settlements, hospital donations, and the arrangements after Mara’s death.
Especially the arrangements after Mara’s death.
“Did Mrs. Landon know him?” Rowan asked.
“She said his picture was on the missing-person paper.”
“What paper?”
“The one with Dad.”
Rowan kept his expression steady. His sister’s eyes were watching him from a frightened child’s face.
“Did you see what it said?”
Evie nodded. “That Dad took money. And that people should call the number if they saw us.”
She looked down at her shoes.
“He didn’t take money.”
Rowan wanted to promise her that. He wanted to promise several things he had no right to promise yet.
Instead, he asked, “How did you get here?”
“Mrs. Landon went behind the counter. I left before she came back.”
“You walked?”
“Some of it. A bus driver let me ride.”
“Do you remember his name?”
“Dennis. He had it on his shirt.”
Of course she remembered.
Owen Harrow had taught his daughter how to survive an emergency. Someone had given him reason to think she might need to.
Rowan turned toward the doorway.
“Ben.”
His security chief stepped inside.
“Get our building’s entrance footage preserved. Find the bus driver and Mrs. Landon. Quietly. I want to know who followed this child.”
Ben Mercer glanced at Evie, then nodded.
“And nobody tells Adrian she’s here.”
That produced a longer silence.
“Yes, sir.”
When Ben left, Rowan placed a glass of water on the low table.
“Evie, I need to ask about your mother.”
Her fingers tightened around the key.
“She died last winter.”
The words struck him harder than he expected.
Not seven years ago.
Last winter.
He had spent seven years grieving a woman who had been alive for most of them.
“Was she sick?”
“Her heart.” Evie swallowed. “Dad said the doctors tried everything.”
Rowan looked toward the harbor until he could trust his voice.
“Did she ever talk about me?”
“She called you Ro.”
He closed his eyes.
“She said you used to carry her over puddles when her shoes leaked.”
Their father had bought himself a new car that winter. Mara had worn cardboard inside her boots.
Rowan opened his eyes again.
“Did she tell you why she left?”
Evie shook her head.
“She said grown-ups sometimes make a mess so big they don’t know how to come home.”
For a moment he could see Mara at sixteen, sitting on a kitchen counter, stealing slices of apple while he tried to bake something edible.
Then he saw a sealed coffin.
Adrian’s sympathetic hand on his shoulder.
His father telling him that viewing the remains would serve no purpose.
Rowan stood too quickly.
Evie flinched.
He stopped immediately.
“I’m angry,” he said. “But you haven’t done anything wrong.”
She watched him carefully.
“My dad says those are different things.”
“Your dad sounds like a smart man.”
“He burns grilled cheese.”
Despite himself, Rowan smiled.
“Smart people do that sometimes.”
Ben returned with a woman wearing navy scrubs and carrying a medical bag.
“This is Dr. Patel,” Rowan told Evie. “She works downstairs. She can check your scraped knee.”
“Are you going somewhere?”
“Only across the room.”
Evie considered that, then took off her backpack.
While the doctor examined her, Rowan moved to the windows with Ben.
“The notice is real,” Ben said quietly. “A private investigator circulated it this morning. Claims Harrow stole confidential financial records.”
“Whose investigator?”
“Vale retained him.”
Rowan looked back at Evie.
She was explaining that the dirt on her tights came from the laundry stairs, not from falling on the sidewalk.
“Get me an attorney who has never worked for my family,” he said.
Ben’s phone vibrated.
He looked at the screen, and his expression changed.
“Adrian’s downstairs.”
“Already?”
“He says Owen Harrow is unstable. Says a child may have approached you.”
Rowan held out his hand.
Evie had left the brass key on the sofa cushion while the doctor cleaned her knee.
He picked it up.
Beneath the blue thread, scratched into the metal, were three tiny letters.
Mara had carved them there when she was sixteen.
B. H. 4.
Boathouse Four.
Rowan remembered the hiding place before he remembered what they had hidden there.
He looked at Ben.
“Tell Adrian I’ll see him.”
May you like
Then he slipped his sister’s key into his pocket.
“And make sure he comes upstairs alone.”
