Ian turned his head slowly toward me. “Nay.”
And so, his Sottish brogue deepened. On purpose? Or not?
I blinked innocently at him. “Nay, what?”
“Don’t even think about it.”
My expression must have betrayed me because he narrowed his eyes slightly.
I pretended to be innocent once again. “What?”
“Stone,” he said flatly.
“The FBI would know who those boxes belonged to,” I said, clearly a viable explanation.
“And Stone would not share that information with you,” Ian said. “Not without compromising an investigation.”
Roxie flicked her tail against his shoulder as if seconding the warning.
I leaned back against the couch. “I wasn’t going to ask.”
His look said he didn’t believe that for a second.
“I need to be up before dawn,” he said, stifling a yawn. “Sunrise shoot.”
I glanced at the clock. It was later than I’d realized.
“Go,” I said. “I’ll try not to dismantle a federal case while you’re asleep.”
“That’s reassuring,” he murmured dryly.
He leaned over and kissed me softly before heading toward the bedroom.
Mo followed him halfway down the hall before stopping and returning to his post near the couch, as if determined to remain on late-night duty.
Roxie remained behind me, warm and still.
I looked at the stack of sealed letters on the side table… Aunt Effie’s letters. The ones she’d kept in her safety deposit box.
It still puzzled me.
She’d left journals in the house for me to find and slips of papers with snippets of life written on them. So why had she placed these in the bank? What made them different?
I reached for the multipage letter I’d started a night or two ago and settled deeper into the couch, Roxie shifting behind me as if she approved of my choice of evening entertainment. Mo lifted his head but, seeing no immediate crisis, lowered it again.
The letter unfolded across my lap, thin paper softened by time.
Aunt Effie had always written like she was telling a story over tea—patient, detailed, with just enough withheld to make you lean closer. But this one… this one read differently.
It read like a romantic suspense novel.
There were coded phrases. Mentions of “deliveries” that clearly weren’t deliveries. References to “long nights waiting for word.” A man who “worked in silence” and “never spoke of what he truly did.”
I forgot about the case. Forgot about everything but the words. Every few paragraphs I found myself thinking, There’s more here. There’s something she isn’t saying.
And then?—
There it was. A single line.
