Life was perfect then. His police detective dad was good at shielding them from the ugliness he saw every day.
Of all the memories he had of his father, vacations in Cedar Key were some of the best. So last week, he closed up his apartment in Dallas, loaded Brinks into his Explorer, hooked up the boat and made the trip to Galveston. While a friend drove the truck and trailer back home, he headed for Florida. Now he was in paradise, surrounded by the rolling sea, quiet sunsets, quaint shops and friendly people. Hopefully the laid-back atmosphere of Cedar Key would offer the peace and direction that had been missing from his life.
Because if he didn’t find it here...well, he just didn’t know where else to look.
Allison laid the book across her lap and looked at the clock hanging on the rose-hued wall. It was ten thirty. A half hour past her usual bedtime. She heaved a sigh. She was stalling, and she knew it.
Last night’s break-in had rattled her more than she wanted to admit. During the day, she had done well. First thing this morning, she’d called Terrance and he’d come right out to measure the window and make a list of what he needed. By eleven, the work was done—a new piece of glass installed and paint touched up where the intruder had tried to pry open the window.
The afternoon hadn’t been bad, either. With a charter that included three active young boys, she had had plenty to occupy her thoughts. But once her customers had headed back to their vacation cottage, all the distractions were gone. That was when the uneasiness started. She began to tackle her chores, and memories of the prior night surged forward. As the sun sank lower in the sky and darkness became an imminent threat, her tension mounted. Then Blake had called out his booming greeting six feet behind her, almost sending her into cardiac arrest.
But the walk home had been nice. There was something reassuring about having him next to her, Brinks in front. When he offered to go in first, she almost accepted his offer. Then she changed her mind. It was one random break-in. She would buck up and deal with it. She had certainly been through worse.
Learning that Tom had been murdered had knocked the foundation right out from under her. But his death had been just the beginning. Three nights later, two thugs had showed up—the kind of men who broke legs and threw people in the river in concrete boots. They’d been there to make sure she didn’t talk. But one couldn’t tell what one didn’t know. Apparently, they’d believed her, because they’d left her alone after that.
Over the next two months, her life slowly unraveled. The more the authorities delved into Tom’s death, the more they learned about his life. And it didn’t coincide at all with what she knew. Her Tom was a detective, honest and hardworking. He even moonlighted as a security guard for one of the wealthy Providence families. The Tom the investigation uncovered was a dirty cop owned by the mob. The honorable man she thought she had married didn’t exist.
No, after all she went through two and a half years ago, she wouldn’t let anything steal the peace she had found on Cedar Key. She pushed herself up from the couch and bent to turn off the lamp. With Blake at her side, shaking off the effects of the break-in had been easy. Now, in the dark, while most of the neighborhood slept, it was a little more difficult.
Maybe she should get a dog. A dog would alert her if someone tried to come into the house. And a deep, threatening growl would likely stop an intruder before he even got that far. Yeah, and what would she do with a dog while she was on the boat? A lot of customers would have a problem with a canine guest.
Maybe an alarm. An alarm wouldn’t have to be taken out and walked. It wouldn’t eat much, either.
She sighed and started up the stairs, resting her hand against the bronze angel that stood poised atop the newel post. The angel had been there when she bought the house, and although she had completely renovated the old Victorian, it had remained a permanent fixture. Bronze eyes stared straight ahead, serene but alert, as if watching over the house, guarding the front door.
Except now she wasn’t facing the door straight on, more like she was guarding the sidelight. Had the angel always been slightly turned? Why hadn’t she noticed?
She cupped its back, slipping her fingers between the bronze wings. The chill that had passed over her the night of the break-in crept along her skin again. Did her intruder try to remove the angel from the newel post? No. With all the valuables in the house, and her iPad and laptop in plain view, the intruder wasn’t likely after a bronze finial.
She dismissed the thought and tried to straighten the angel, not really expecting it to move. It did. She twisted it back and forth, pulling upward. The angel didn’t come off, but the tugging was creating a small gap in the seam between the top of the post and its sides. Was it supposed to come apart?
She strode to the kitchen and returned with a table knife, then worked her way along the seam on all four sides. The top wasn’t nailed to the post. In fact, there didn’t seem to be anything holding the two pieces together except countless coats of varnish and decades of swelling in Florida’s relentless humidity. She continued to pry, her pulse racing as the gap widened.
Finally the top came loose from the post. She turned it over, checking the underside. A bolt ran through the wood and into the finial, holding the two pieces together. When her gaze moved to the newel post, anticipation coursed through her. It was hollow, its interior hidden in shadow.
She hurried to the foyer closet to retrieve a flashlight, her heart pounding in earnest. Was something of value hidden inside the secret compartment? Was that what her intruder was after?
When she returned to the staircase, she shined the light into the opening. About eight inches down was a thick roll of yellowed paper about two and a half feet long, judging from the height of the post. Blueprint size. She slid it out and began to uncoil it. Just what she suspected—house plans.
Without fully unrolling them, she laid them aside, and they curled back into the shape they had maintained for the past hundred years.
Surely the secret compartment held something more interesting than house plans. But when she shined the light into the opening again, the beam revealed smooth, hard wood, all the way to the bottom. The compartment was empty.
She sank to the bottom step and rested her chin in her hands, elbows propped against her knees. Maybe her intruder wasn’t trying to get into the newel post.
Then why had he tampered with the finial? It hadn’t been turned accidentally. All the times she had gone up and down those steps, the angel had never moved.
No, he had broken into the house with plans to retrieve something from that secret compartment. He just hadn’t anticipated her being there and the police arriving before he could remove the top.
Which meant he would be back.
The uneasiness she had struggled to keep at bay for the past twenty hours intensified, and she cast a worried glance at the front door. It was locked. So were all the windows. She had checked.
Of course, everything had been locked up last night, too. And that hadn’t stopped him.
Well, if he did come back, he would be disappointed...unless he had a fascination with old house plans. She frowned at the thick roll of yellowed papers lying on the hardwood floor. They were an interesting find. She would have appreciated them under other circumstances. Now she just wanted to know why someone had broken into her house, and a set of ancient house plans wasn’t doing anything to help her figure that out.
She knelt next to them and unrolled them fully to find the bound edge, planning to roll them more tightly. She may as well put them back where she found them. But as soon as she reached the inside edge, a smaller page sprang loose from the bound ones.
It was a single sheet, eight and a half by eleven, unlined. Like copy paper. Except it was old. Or maybe it had just gotten wet. The page was crinkled and unevenly yellow. Three lines had been scrawled across the front—each beginning with a letter followed by a series of numbers. Whatever it meant, it probably had nothing to