A deep chill raised the flesh on Grace’s arm. She felt Oliver’s voice come to whisper in her ear:Keep an eye out for someone close to the investigation, she thought.
Sam Whitcomb had been there that night. Supposedly he had been filming. But what if he hadn’t? What if he’d handed the camera off for a brief moment?
She was beginning to hate being suspicious of everyone—of “seeing a devil behind every bush,” as her mother used to say. People were mostly good, weren’t they? Wasn’t that what this fair showed?
They wandered deeper into the gardens. The paper lanterns were dim, and the evening was beautiful. The air seemed fresher here, somehow, and in the distance, someone let out a scream as the roller coaster rumbled down its tracks.
A koi fish flipped in the pond, sending out expanding ripples.
Grace jumped a little, then chastised herself for being so jittery. These thoughts weren’t helpful. She told herself to ignore them when she saw something move in the shadows just ahead.
That was, until Frannie let out a sharp yelp. Her instinctive sound of fear instantly turned Grace’s blood to ice.
“Don’t move,” a voice threatened.
The first thing Grace saw was the knife, gleaming in the moon-light.
And then a man emerged from the shadows.
He wore a mask, but it didn’t hide the fact that his eyes were a piercing green. He was tall and well-built, and dressed completely in black.
Frannie covered her mouth to muffle a scream.
Earnest was quick as lightning. He stepped in front of Lillie and Grace. Copper made a protective move toward Frannie, to shield her, but the masked man held out his knife in a warning to stop him.
Copper put his hands up in a show of surrender.
“Your jewels,” the man ordered. He pointed to Frannie. “Take them off and hand them to me. Now.”
Trembling, Frannie tried to comply, but her hands were shaking too much to unclasp the jewels from around her neck. Grace looked wildly to the teahouse, illuminated and quiet in the distance. Therewas faint music playing in the air, but the fairgrounds suddenly seemed all too far away. She felt in the dark for Lillie’s hand and Lillie squeezed back frantically.
Frannie finally managed to untangle the jewels from her neck and tossed them to the burglar.
“Now yours,” he said, swiveling to point the knife toward Lillie.
Lillie’s face was white as bone.
“Listen—” Earnest said, stepping forward.
“Shut up,” the thief snapped. Grace tried not to make eye contact with him, but when he turned, she stole a brazen look to profile him.
She waited for him to approach her next, to demand that she give him any jewels she was wearing. Of course, she didn’t have anything valuable on, but he couldn’t know that.
When he whirled around toward Grace, she was ready. But Copper got in the way. He attempted to take the man’s knife, but the man was too quick. “What are you doing?” the thief barked. Copper winced and drew back his slashed hand. It was bleeding.
The thief turned and approached Grace, holding out his knife with Copper’s blood still on it.
He was close enough that she could smell his sweat and her own.
She kept her eyes on the knife, swallowing a sound of fright when he brought it near her face.
But instead of cutting her, he lowered his mouth to her ear.
“Stop looking,” he hissed.
The air around her stilled, so that she almost imagined she could see the dust swirling in the night air, the spring petals falling slowly around her like confetti. And that was the moment when she realized that this was not just a random robbery.
The masked man stuffed the jewels into his bag and as he drew his hand away from her face, she noticed that he had a ring on his finger.
