She was nervous. Why was she nervous? It was just a phone. An old phone mysteriously hidden in a floorboard.
That was suspicious.
Her drumming grew louder.
Seven days had passed since finding the cell. If it were up to her, she’d have charged it the second she got home. But she didn’t have the right charger. Bart from River Cell Solutions had to special order one and, well, that had taken a week. He’d dropped it off early this morning. Perks of being in a small town.
Her gaze flickered to the time. Crap. She had to be at work in fifteen minutes. Shecouldwait until her shift finished to check it out.
Ha. That wasn’t happening.
She studied the hard outer case. According to Bart, the phone was about a decade old and likely a burner.
Who had put it there? The person who’d rented the building before her? Back then it had been a bookstore. But who was the old shop owner? She had no idea.
Her own cell vibrated with a text.
Mom: Hi, darling. Do you want to come over and have dim sum with me and Jonah tonight?
Dim sum? Random.
Polly: I have some bookkeeping to do for the shop tonight. Sorry, Mom. Maybe another time.
Mom: Okay.
Three dots popped up, then disappeared. Then they appeared again.
Mom: Have you been seeing much of those SAR boys at Bloom?
Polly: Why?
Mom: Oh, you know, because they’re young and fit, and Maureen says that with the exception of Ethan, they’re all single.
Oh brother.
Polly: You’re getting your gossip from our town psychic?
Mom: Maureen’s never wrong. Do you know that she predicted I was going to meet a tall, handsome man who would ignite a whirlwind romance? Then a week later, I met Jonah.
Polly scoffed—a loud, very unladylike scoff that absolutely no one heard but her. That was not a psychic prediction from Maureen. That was just a local, noticing a pattern of events and correctly assuming the pattern would continue.
The burner’s screen lit up, and Polly dropped her own phone and lifted the old cell.
No password required. Good. One less hurdle.
She clicked into the photo album to see a few dozen photos. But not of people or places. The first three were old newspaper clippings. Really old clippings.
The first article was about a missing woman named Lila Wren. She’d been a tourist who’d disappeared in the forest about fifteen years ago.
Polly gasped at the second…
Opal Sinclair. Maggie’s mother.
She’d died when Maggie was ten and had been found in the river. Her death had been declared an accidental drowning. But just recently, Maggie had learned there’d been drugs in her mother’s system, something that had never been explained.
Polly flicked to the last article. Francie Collins—David Collins’s wife. Her disappearance dated back twenty-five years.
Why the three articles? Did the owner of the phone believe they were connected?
