The sandwich took care of my hunger, and thanks to Dr. Westlake’s painkiller my hand was no longer throbbing. A long, hot shower took care of the gross, sticky feeling from wearing too many clothes all day. It also helped me, with an assist from my noninjuredhand, douse any lingering flames from my intense greenhouse make-out session with Dan. The only thing left keeping me from a well-earned night of sleep was the door.
That damned door was burned into my memory. Something was incredibly off about this farm, this town, and most of all, Dan. My instincts, which were hardly ever wrong, told me that the answers to all of my questions were behind that door. Over an hour had passed since I’d heard Dan’s footsteps pass my bedroom on the way to his apartment upstairs, so I figured the coast was clear.
I jumped out of bed fully dressed and tiptoed downstairs with my shoes in one hand and the ring of farm keys clutched in my other palm, like a teenager breaking curfew, before slipping out the back door. After deciding the ATV would make too much noise—and let’s face it, with my luck, I’d probably crash it into a tree—I started to jog in the direction of the greenhouse. Thirty minutes later, according to the cleanest smartwatch in Georgia, I’d made it. I slipped the key out of my pocket and unlocked the door. I wondered a second too late if there was a burglar alarm installed, but there were no flashing lights and no high-pitched trilling of an alarm. I wasted no time in making my way to the security door and smoothing my palm against the cold metal surface. I stared at the keypad, realizing that I had no plan for how to open this thing. The first thing I needed to figure out was how long the password was. I pressed the number one and the lock beeped and a green light flashed. I pressed three more. More green lights, indicating that the password was more than four digits. I pressed two more and got the red light I was anticipating.
So the code was six digits. Maybe a birthday?
I typed in Dan’s birthday. I caught a glimpse of his driver’s license when he insisted on paying Mavis for the blueberry muffins. It wasn’t his birthday.
I typed in my grandfather’s birthday, then my grandmother’s. No luck.
The code probably wasn’t even a birthday. It could be any combination of numbers and letters. It could take me days to figure it out, maybe even weeks.
As a joke, I typed in my birthday and got the outcome I’d expected. When I was just about to turn and go back to the house, an absurd idea popped into my head. What if the code was Annie’s birthday? Her life and death were such a big part of my family’s history. I had nothing to lose by trying one last code.
I held my breath as I typed. The lock let out a series of three beeps before the door hissed and slid into the wall. My heart pounded as I waited for the putrid stench of the tons of fertilizer that Dan warned me about, but it never came. The smell that did come to me was incredibly familiar. It was the strongest I’d ever smelled, and I pulled my T-shirt over my nose before I stepped inside.
It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the blue light, and even longer for my brain to process what my eyes were seeing. There were rows and rows of wooden tables like the ones that were in the front of the greenhouse, but instead of tomatoes, cucumbers, roses, and orchids, they were lined with rows and rows of incredibly recognizable and highly illegal marijuana plants.
“Holy shit.” I let out the breath that I’d been holding since typing Annie’s birthday into the keypad. I’d barely made it into the grow room when a sign caught my eye.
ANNIE’SGREENGABLES
HYBRID
Mavis had said she was running low on Annie’s Green Gables when she was talking to Dan at the bakery. Suddenly their conversation made sense. Dan was using my grandparents’ farm to run an illegal marijuana operation and Mavis was a part of it. My brain was trying to make sense of all this information when I also realized that Dan had lied to me. The entire time he was being so loving and attentive, he’d been lying to my face. I’d allowed a possible drug kingpin to get to second base.
As far from tired as one person could possibly get, I stormed out of Dan’s grow room, making sure the door closed behind me, and out of the greenhouse. I needed answers, and I wasn’t going to wait until morning to get them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Imust have made it back to the farmhouse purely on rage because I barely remembered the journey. The house was still dark when I stormed through the kitchen, making a beeline for Dan’s apartment. In a brief moment of clarity, I realized that I was going to confront a criminal who was almost twice my size and strong—very strong, with big hands that he definitely knew how to use.
Dammit; focus, Emma.
I quickly searched the kitchen for a suitable weapon to defend myself in case things got dicey during our confrontation. Unfortunately, Dan kept the kitchen so neat that my options weren’t plentiful. There was a small saucepan in the dish-drying rack. It wasn’t very big, but I was sure it would do the job. I stalked out of the kitchen and down the hallway, passing my grandfather’s study, making me feel a little pang of guilt thinking about our nightly chess game, which I quickly doused once I reached the stairs.
I searched the hallway for the entrance to the attic, but there wereno obvious choices. A pull string connected to a panel in the ceiling is what I’d expected to find, but no luck. There was a slight breeze coming from a section of the wall next to a closet door. If I hadn’t been inspecting the hall so carefully, I might have missed it. I pressed my palm to the panel, and to my surprise, it gave a little before springing open toward me. Beyond it was a dark, narrow passageway that led to a staircase.
I crept up the stairs as softly as I could. Apart from a few faint squeaks, my ascent was completely noiseless. When I finally reached the end of the staircase, after what felt like years, I found myself standing in the coziest one-bedroom apartment, enveloped by Dan’s intoxicating smell. The only light source was a moonbeam streaming in through the window. There was a tiny kitchen, which of course had a teapot on the stovetop. In the living room was a small couch and a pile of cushions on the floor next to a stack of books about plants. My curiosity about Dan’s inner sanctum momentarily eclipsed my anger as I continued to explore his apartment. There were pictures of his family. Dan looked almost exactly like his father, but he definitely inherited his mother’s smile. I smoothed my fingertips over the frame housing a photo of an elderly dark-skinned woman sitting next to a rosebush and guessed that must be Alice, the neighbor that taught him all about roses. The next photo made my heart stop. It was in a slim gold frame atop a small table. It was accompanied by the remnants of a stick of incense and a small bundle of what looked like wildflowers. In the photo, Dan was standing between my grandparents, somewhere on the farm by the looks of it, and all three of them were laughing. I stared at the photo, transfixed, realizing that I would never have a moment like that with my grandparents. I noticed how much mymother and grandmother favored each other, and I suddenly missed all the moments we could have had together. A tear slid down my face a split second before a deep voice made me jump.
“That was taken two weeks before they left for the resort,” Dan murmured behind me with a wistful sigh.
“Jesus Christ!” I jumped and spun around, swinging the tiny saucepan.
“Whoa!” Dan lifted his arms and jumped back, narrowly missing getting nailed in the ribs by my would-be weapon. “What the hell are you playing at, Emma? Have you gone mad?”
“No,” I gritted, holding the saucepan up, ready to strike again. “But I did go to the greenhouse.” I raised an eyebrow, waiting for a response.
“Yeah, I know.” His confused eyes darted from the saucepan to my face. “I was with you.”
“No, I mean Ijustcame back from the greenhouse.” I tightened my grip on the handle. “Did you think I wouldn’t be able to figure out the code was my own sister’s birthday?” This last sentence came out with a lot more confidence than I felt because it was pure luck that had caused me to guess it was Annie’s birthday.
Dan’s face went through so many different expressions in a matter of milliseconds that it would have been funny if the situation weren’t so dire. This was not a well-thought-out plan. I was alone in a secret attic apartment with a man who was almost twice my size and strong enough to carry a whining twenty-nine-year-old woman with a bleeding hand across a field. Also, since I was listing all the reasons why confronting Dan in the middle of the night was a terrible idea, Dr. Westlake’s pain pill was wearing off, and my hand was starting to throb. Still, I raised my eyebrows at Dan, waiting for an explanation.
“Emma, I planned to tell you.”
“Tell me what, Dan? I need to hear you say it.”
