Tilly: You’re fine. I’m actually just leaving work now anyway.
Kayden: Everything okay?
Tilly: Yeah, there were a million fires to put out and they all turned up at four p.m. I’m grateful Jake offered to stay with me. Want me to pick up dinner?
She added the part about Jake to remind him that she wasn’t here alone, knowing he’d lose his mind if he thought she was.
Kayden: I’ll grab us something on my way home. Be safe.
Tilly: I knew there was a reason I liked you.
Kayden: I knew it was because I feed you. Don’t take long or I’m coming to find you.
Yeah, he probably would too.
She’d just taken out her keys to open her car, when she suddenly remembered the invoice she had to pay. Crap. She’d told the guys working on the skywalk that she’d pay it by the end of the day.
With a sigh, she moved back toward the building. She was almost at the door when a sound had her pausing and turning. It almost sounded like a footstep. She scanned the parking lot as cool evening air slipped over her skin, the quiet almost feeling eerie now.
She lifted her phone to text Jake again.
Tilly: Hey. I left something in the office, just going back inside. Everything okay with you?
Once the text was sent, she slotted the key into the door and stepped inside. Quickly, she jogged to her office and shuffled through everything on her desk.
Jesus, why was everything so disorganized right now? She wasn’t a disorganized person. Hell, she usually prided herself on having her shit together. But with the increasing busyness of the center and the mess that had been her life the last few weeks, she’d been slipping.
Where was it? Wait, Pixie had told her she’d print the invoice, but had she ever actually given it to Tilly?
Frowning, she went out to Pixie’s desk and started shuffling through a stack of printed documents on the desk. At least her stuff appeared organized, not that it was helping Tilly find what she needed.
When she didn’t find it on the desk, she opened the first drawer, noticing it was just stationery, before trying the second. It was in the third drawer that she found another pile of papers.
Tilly pulled them out…frowning at what looked to be medical bills. Dozens of them. Were these for Pixie’s father when he’d been alive? Why would she still have them?
She was about to put them back into the drawer when she noticed the framed photo that was beneath them. It was of Pixie and an older man, maybe her dad.
Tilly remembered this photo. It had been sitting on Pixie’s desk on Tilly’s first day. She’d even looked at it when Pixie told her about her father’s passing.
Why would she have hidden it away in a drawer?
Something in the photo caught Tilly’s attention.
Wait…was that…
Tilly gasped.
The watch. Pixie was wearing the watch Jake had found in the mountains.
The same watch that had been planted in Tilly’s drawer and tested positive for Macy’s blood.
She dropped the framed photo like it had burned her, barely hearing the crack of glass. Had Pixie been the one who’d robbed the visitors center safe, then killed Macy? Had she also tried to frame Tilly?
Her breaths were whooshing in and out of her when something sounded from the deck.
Jake. She had to tell him.
She ran toward the door to the deck and opened it, just as the door to the café closed.
