missed him already. As she stood on her sunny porch thinking about him, Emily wondered when he would be able to return for good. Saying good-bye for the second time was excruciating. She wiped another tear that trickled down her cheek and then took a long, deep breath.
With resignation, she lumbered across the porch and stuck her key in the lock. As she unlocked her front door, she glanced up and down her street to be certain she and Colin hadn’t been followed back to her house.
Seeing no one out of the ordinary, she slipped into her house and kicked off her shoes by the door. She pulled her handgun out of her purse and carefully crept back to the kitchen, peeking around corners, with her weapon poised to shoot. Emily was determined not to be a victim, and she silently reminded herself of that fact.
I know how to handle a gun—I teach self-defense classes—I can take care of myself.
By the time she reached the kitchen, she was reasonably certain she was safe and alone. Setting her purse and gun down on her breakfast bar, she noticed an opened envelope lying on top of a stack of mail. It had come the day before, but she had set it aside because she was headed out to the going-away party.
Perching herself on a barstool, she pulled the folded paper out of the envelope. Addressed to Evan Parker, it was a letter from a storage facility alerting her late husband that his next year’s rent on the unit was due. She hadn’t been aware Evan had a storage unit.
Her thoughts flew to the unidentified brass key she had found in his safe deposit box a couple of months before. She still hadn’t figured out what it opened. But now, with this letter coming from the storage facility, she wondered if it would open a padlock on that unit—Evan’s unit.
Having seen Colin off, her day was wide open, and rather than spend it missing Colin, she hopped in her car and headed to the storage facility to check it out. It was only mid-morning—she’d have plenty of time to search through whatever Evan had hidden there.
Making sure she wasn’t being followed, she kept a sharp eye on her rearview mirrors as she made a series of three right turns in the center of town. Since no car appeared to be tailing her, particularly not a black one, she drove to the storage company on the edge of town.
While she was driving, her phone began to ring, and she dug it out of her oversized leather handbag that lay on the passenger seat, noticing it was one of her friends. “Hey, Maggie.”
“Just checkin’ in,” Maggie said. “Don’t forget to pick Molly and me up at noon at Camille’s place.”
Emily had promised to take Maggie and Molly, Camille’s teenage daughter, to the airport to catch a flight for their trip to Hawaii. Maggie had invited Emily to go with her, but Emily was not ready to leave her home exposed to additional break-ins and searches, especially when she was uncovering more and more clues to her late husband’s true identity. So instead, Maggie invited seventeen-year-old Molly, the only other single female she was close to, as an early graduation gift.
What a pair they would make on the beaches of Hawaii, Emily thought. Maggie was a beauty—a southern-belle fitness queen, lightly tanned with flowing blonde waves and dazzling blue eyes. Even in her mid-thirties, she would do her bikini justice. Molly, on the other hand, was a pretty girl, tall and slender with fair skin, long red hair, and shockingly deep emerald-green eyes. The red hair had come from her mother and the green eyes courtesy of her father, but the I-take-no-crap-from-anyone attitude was all her own.
“I didn’t forget. I’ll be there at noon.”
“Did y’all get Colin off to California this mornin’?” Maggie asked.
“I did. We went out for breakfast first, then I sent him on his way.”
Emily wasn’t sure she wanted to spill the beans about the storage unit yet. There was plenty of time to do that later if it came to anything.
“And did he say those three little words y’all’ve been waitin’ for?”
Emily could hear the curiosity in Maggie’s voice and knew her well enough to know it was killing her to find out. “As a matter of fact, he did.”
“Yay!” Maggie squealed. “I’m so happy for y’all, Em. I just knew it. I told Camille he’d say those little gems before he