“Bye, Elsa,” Courtney said.
The dog scampered over and sniffed her hands in farewell.
“Bye for now, Courtney,” Olive said with a smile.
“Goodbye, Olive.”
With a wave, the elderly lady departed, the dog trotting along at her side. Courtney remained on the bench for a few more minutes, enjoying the sunshine and the peace of the park.
Restored by the bright day and the beautiful park and the brief moments she’d spent chatting with Olive Nimmo while watching sweet and silly little Elsa snuffling here and there, Courtney got to her feet and turned towards the gates.
If there was a temporary job out there for her somewhere, she wouldn’t find it by sitting here doing nothing.
She had to take action. That’s what had kept her going so far over the past year of unexpected upheavals and traumatic grief—and it’s what would keep her going now, too.
Once she was back at Rosie’s house, she’d start trawling the online job sites looking for something temporary to see her through the next few weeks.
Surely there was someone out there who needed a smart, self-motivated person to help them?
8
Travis Stone sat hunchedat his desk, fingers flying over his keyboard as he raced to keep up with the crazy story unfolding inside his head.
As an author, it was one of his biggest challenges—getting the story down on the page before he lost track of the scene he was imagining and the details vanished into the ether, never to be remembered again.
The flashes of inspiration were always too quick and fleeting for his clumsy typing skills. When he was caught in the midst of a creative burst, as he was now, the real world around him ceased to exist as he disappeared into the imaginary world he’d conjured on the page.
His heroine, Maura Shaw, a brilliant historian and accidental amateur sleuth, was currently pitched in a battle of wit and guile against Phillip Rorkman, an international jewel thief who was in hiding in the little Cotswold village of Morton Marshford, following a heist gone wrong.
If Maura could lure the suave Rorkman into the open long enough for him to incriminate himself and reveal his true identity, she could use it as leverage to persuade the thief to help her break the thus far impenetrable locks on thecrypt door at Castle Ferleagh, inside which, Maura believed, lay incontrovertible proof that her late friend and university colleague, Rick Flynn, had not died during a hill-climbing accident as assumed but had in fact been murdered.
Uncovering proof of foul play would help Maura convince the police that local millionaire businessman and owner of Castle Ferleagh, Grant Reagan, was the culprit, something she’d long suspected but been unable to prove.
After months spent piecing together evidence, and assessing motives, means, and opportunity, Maura had never been closer to revealing Grant Reagan as the evil murderer she knew him to be, rather than the genial, wealthy philanthropist he’d convinced everyone else he was.
Maura’s immediate problem was that aligning herself with the jewel thief Phillip Rorkman sat uneasily with her. He was, after all, a villain. He’d never hurt or killed anyone—well, not as far as she knew—but hewasa thief. Maura didn’t like making common cause with such a person.
However, as he, and he alone, was her best chance at breaking the crypt locks in Castle Ferleagh, she saw no other choice.
Which was why Maura was in the middle of concocting a plan to lure Phillip Rorkman into revealing his true identity, so that she could then swoop in and ‘persuade’ him to help her with her quest for justice in exchange for keeping his secrets to herself.
Travis’s fingers rattled over the keyboard as he concluded a half-page section of internal narrative during which Maura Shaw wrestled with her conscience and her morals as she sought to trick Phillip Rorkman into becoming her unwitting accomplice. With the lengthy paragraph written, he leaned back in his chair and stared at the screen, wondering what would happen next.
He hadn’t made things easy for his wry and whip-smart protagonist in this book. Not that he ever made things easyfor her in any of the stories he wrote about her. Complicated and twisty plots were one of the hallmarks of his Maura Shaw mystery series and the reason why readers kept coming back for more.
Pulling a notepad across his desk and picking up a pen, Travis scribbled out some thoughts and questions that sprang automatically from the chapter he’d spent the morning writing and which concluded with Maura’s internal debate about her stratagem involving Phillip Rorkman the jewel thief.
Is this a step too far morally for Maura?Travis wrote.Rorkman is a jewel thief! Should she really be working alongside this guy?
Frowning at the scribbled note, Travis tapped his pen on the page before writing some more.
The whole plot so far leads to this moment where Maura and Rorkman are forced to connect and trust one another. It works! And it’s a terrific predicament that I now need to get her out of. Yes, Rorkman can help unlock the castle crypt thanks to his lock-breaking skills. But I think there’s more to Rorkman than meets the eye. Is he really just a brilliant jewel thief, motivated by nothing other than the thrill of the heist and the enormous sums of money he earns as a result? Or does he have deeper layers hidden beneath his moustache-twirling façade? Deeper layers that would stun Maura if she knew about them and force her to rethink her opinion about this rugged and resourceful and handsome thief?
Travis tapped his pen against the notepad again, liking where this line of thought might take him. So far, Phillip Rorkman felt oddly one-dimensional as a character on the page, and Travis didn’t like that. Clearly, Maura Shaw didn’t like it either, which was why her internal monologue about the man had gone on quite as long as it had.
He made a note in the margin of the page to trim that monologue a little when it came to revising the draft. Enough was as good as a feast, after all.
Returning to his thoughts on the conflict between Maura and Rorkman, Travis scribbled down a few more notes.
