Hollow House Bed and Breakfast sat halfway down the block, its white wraparound porch crowded with rocking chairs and hanging ferns that swayed gently in the breeze.
Micah’s SUV already sat near the curb.
A woman opened the front door before they even reached it. Her bouncy blonde curls greeted them with false enthusiasm. She introduced herself as Maggie Goodley, the owner.
The thirty-something woman looked relieved enough to sag when she saw Wes.
“Oh good. Sheriff Sutherland is checking it out.” Her eyes shifted to Rowan beneath the brim of her baseball cap but politely didn’t linger. “I told him I hadn’t touched anything after Clara found the room.”
“You did the right thing,” Wes said.
Maggie lowered her voice. “I don’t like that this happened here.”
That didn’t make Rowan feel better.
Micah appeared at the end of the hallway upstairs and motioned them toward him.
She braced herself for whatever they were about to find out.
CHAPTER 30
Cold settledlow in Rowan’s stomach when she saw Wes’s room.
“Whoever came in knew what they were doing,” Micah said from near the door. “There are no signs of forced entry downstairs. Whoever did this probably used the window.”
Wes crossed to the desk.
Something in his expression changed. It wasn’t surprise.
It was recognition.
His gaze sharpened on something lying partially beneath a shifted stack of papers.
“What is it?” Rowan asked.
Wes lifted the papers.
A photograph sat underneath them.
Rowan frowned at first, not understanding what she was seeing.
Then her stomach dropped.
It was her.
The photo had been taken yesterday in the woods.
Close enough to see the tension in her face as she stood near the burned stretch of grass behind Refuge Cove.
Rowan couldn’t seem to pull air fully into her lungs.
She remembered the exact moment now—the cold wind moving through the trees, the smell of smoke still lingering in the air, the strange feeling she’d had that someone was watching from deeper in the woods.
In the photograph, she was turned partially toward the tree line.
Toward the camera.
Not looking directly into it.
