The late spring breeze carried the scent of salt water and something slightly tangy, like someone was having a clambake. It brought back memories of the two years she’d spent in New Haven back in middle school. After years of moving around, an old friend of her mom’s had told her about a waitressing position in the diner where she worked and offered to rent out her basement.
Ridley and her twin sister, Raina, were used to the schools in Washington, D.C. so moving to some backwater town in the south of Virginia seemed like banishment. Back then the town hadn’t even had its own movie theater.
But their mom’s friend, Miss Ruth, fixed up the basement so nicely it looked like something in one of the fancy design magazines Raina had always liked to flip through at the corner store. Their beds had been covered in pillows and not just the kind you slept on. Pretty little decorative ones with lace at the edges. Miss Ruth had told them she’d done the lace edging herself. It was the first time Ridley had realized everyone didn’t live the way they did.
Her mother didn’t do much after work that didn’t involve a bottle.
They’d stayed there longer than just about anywhere else. Long enough for Ridley to get completely attached to Miss Ruth, her friends at school and the sleepy, little town itself. Driving away in their secondhand Buick had just about broken her heart.
College had become an obsession after that. If she had enough money, she could afford to make her own decisions. To make a place for herself somewhere, something no one could ever take away. Her sister had been just as driven. Raina had started modeling right after high school and never looked back. After years of working nonstop and traveling all over the world, she’d finally bought a house in the one place they’d lived that had felt like home. She’d sent Ridley a message containing her address, the security code and a simple sentence.
You are always welcome.
Those four words had let her know that no matter what happened, her sister would always be there for her. When she’d found herself scared and in need of a place to stay, this had been the first place she’d thought to come. She’d always known she’d come back to New Haven at some point.
But not like this.
All she’d wanted was to locate her father. After her mother’s death she’d become obsessed with finding the only family they had left. The private investigator she’d hired had finally gotten a lead. If only she’d pushed him to tell her what it was. Images of charred wreckage flashed through her mind and she shivered. She pulled the diamond pendant she’d been wearing since the accident from beneath her shirt and stroked it.
What had he found out that was bad enough to make someone sabotage his car?
Whoever it was had to have been planning for him to die in the accident. They just probably hadn’t counted on her witnessing the whole thing. She pulled back her sleeve to reveal the mottled bruises and scars on her forearms.
“You’re just here to hide out until the police figure out what happened.”
The officers working the case hadn’t told her much, but she could tell something was up by what they hadn’t said. When she’d asked directly, they couldn’t tell her what she wanted to hear: that the accident was truly an accident. She planned to stay under the radar until they figured it out.
The arrow on her phone pointed to the left so she turned onto the next street. An ornate wrought iron sign spelled out:
HAVENSBROOKE
Ridley walked past towering houses with lush manicured lawns. Raina had been trying to convince her to move back to Virginia for ages and had claimed her new neighborhood was the perfect place for Ridley to launch her landscape design business now that she was done with school. As she turned onto her sister’s street, she gasped at the first sight of the house.
As girls, they’d always talked about what kind of houses they’d buy when they were rich and famous. It looked like her sister had managed to find a house that fit both their childhood dreams to perfection, a stately three-story red brick with wide Palladian windows along the front.
“You really did it, Ray.”
It made her sad that she hadn’t been here when her sister moved in. They’d always been there for each other during major milestones like this. Until recently.
Until David.
She knocked on the door and then rang the doorbell. It was completely quiet in the house. Raina had told her there were two security panels, but to use the one on the back so she could get the spare key. As she climbed the stairs to the back deck, she peered through the back window into the kitchen. There was a long, oak farmers table covered with a cheerful, red gingham tablecloth. It looked cozy and inviting.
She walked over to the deck chair farthest from the door and squeezed the edges of its cushion until she felt a hard lump.
“Gotcha.”
She unzipped the side of the cushion and rooted around until her fingers closed around the key. The alarm panel was mounted on the side of the door. She dropped her backpack on the deck and then punched in the security code. Three red lights flashed.
Access Denied.
“Okay. Let me try that again.” She wiped her hand on the leg of her jeans and carefully typed the numbers in again.
Access Denied.
“Crap. I know I’m typing this right.” She tugged her phone from her pocket and pulled up the email from her sister. It was possible she’d forgotten something. It had been a few months since she’d gotten the email.
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From: Raina Winters (