The Memory House

By

Mary Alford

Chapter One

The Call

Elise Warren woke to the sensation of someone whispering her name just as assuredly as if they were standing next to her bed.

With her heart pounding, she turned on the lamp next to her, the light proving she was alone. She tucked herself beneath the tangled blankets, listening to the rain against the windows of her Portland, Oregon apartment. The familiar pieces of furniture she’d carefully picked out chased away some remnants of fear.

She reached for the phone she’d turned off the night before in order to get some sleep after a particularly grueling day.

After hitting the start button, she returned the phone to the nightstand. The pale blue glow of the clock sitting next to it revealed the time. 8:15 a.m.

Her thoughts zeroed in on the new patient she’d seen the day before. Her childhood had come close to mirroring Elise’s. Their session had haunted her long after her patient left the office, even finding its way into her nightmares.

She tried to let go of the uneasy feeling that remained. Convince her subconscious to let go of the apprehension.

The phone vibrated against the wood, rattling beside a stack of patient files she brought home from the counseling center.

Elise watched the screen until the vibration stopped. A missed call from an unknown number popped up on the screen. It had come in shortly after seven the evening before. Evening calls rarely brought anything good. Grief kept terrible hours. So did panic, regret, and the kind of loneliness people tried to ignore until the rest of the world had gone quiet.

As a grief counselor, Elise had received all variations of them.

She reached for the phone, her fingers cold despite the warmth of the room. She had no reason to expect trouble. Her life had become orderly over the years. Built from routines she understood and boundaries she controlled.

Still, “that feeling” wouldn’t go away.

She pulled in a breath and called the number back. A distinguished male voice answered on the second ring. “Daniel Harlow.”

She didn’t recognize the name or the voice. “Hello, this is Elise Warren. I missed your call last night.”

Silence filled the space before Harlow cleared his throat. “Ms. Warren, thank you for calling me back. As I said, my name is Daniel Harlow of Harlow and Pierce Estate Attorneys. I’m your father’s estate attorney.”

Her father. She couldn’t bring out a single word as she gripped the phone tighter and waited for him to continue.

“Ms. Warren,” he said in a less stern tone. “I’m sorry to have to be the one to inform you that your father, Dr. Thomas Warren, died earlier this week.”

Elise’s breath caught. Not with a gasp or a cry. Her body simply went still while the sentence settled over her.

Her father was dead.

She hadn’t seen him in twenty-four years.

“According to the terms of his will, you are his sole surviving heir. Ownership of the Warren estate, including the property known as Coldwater Hollow, now passes to you.”

The name opened something inside her. Not a memory exactly. A door. Beyond it waited a house with dark shutters and tall, narrow windows. A long hallway fading into darkness. Rain dripping from the edge of a porch while a man stood beneath the light and watched her mother drive away.

Elise’s fingers tightened on the phone.

“Your father left specific instructions regarding the property,” the attorney continued. “He requested that you personally inspect the contents of the house before making any decision about its sale.”

Her heart slammed against her chest. No. She couldn’t do this now. “I-I’m sorry. This is all so sudden. I…I need to call you back.” She punched end. Silence rushed back into the apartment.

Elise propped herself up against the headboard, staring at the phone. She expected to feel something. Anger would have made the most sense.

She’d been ten the last time she saw Thomas Warren. Her mother had packed their belongings into the trunk of an aging sedan while rain battered their home along the coast of Oregon.

Elise remembered clutching a shoebox filled with little dolls. Her mother’s hand trembling as she held Elise’s. Looking back through the rear window as the house disappeared behind the trees.

Her father had stood on the porch. He hadn’t tried to stop them or raise a hand in farewell. He’d simply watched them leave.

And her memories of life at Coldwater Hollow both began and ended there, as it always did.

Everything before that night existed only in fragments. A staircase or a locked door. The scent of lilacs. A child humming somewhere nearby.

Elise swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood, the hardwood cold against her bare feet.

Her apartment was small but comfortable. Every surface had a purpose. She kept books arranged by subject. Files neatly stacked. She had folded the cream-colored throw and tossed it on the back of the sofa before she went to bed.

Order soothed her. It left fewer places for the fractured past to hide.

She brought the phone into the kitchen and turned on the light. Soft warm light filled the room, pushing the darkness into corners.

Her reflection hovered in the rain-streaked window above the sink. She’d been born with her mother’s dark brown hair and her father’s gray eyes. Today, at thirty-four, those eyes appeared wider than usual. Her emotions were all over the place right now.

She filled the kettle and set it on the stove.

Thomas Warren had been a respected psychiatrist. Brilliant, according to the articles Elise had once found online. Innovative. Years ahead of his peers in the treatment of childhood trauma and memory loss.

Those descriptions had never matched the man she remembered.

Her father did not comfort. He observed. Even as a child, Elise had understood there was a difference.

That same man had left her the house. The idea seemed almost absurd.

The kettle whistled. She turned off the burner before the sound grew loud enough to disturb the neighbors. Elise poured hot water over the chamomile tea bag and carried the mug into the living room.

The bookshelves lining one wall held the pieces of the life she had built after Coldwater Hollow. Trauma studies. Grief therapy. Memory formation. Dissociation.

She had spent years learning the language of damaged minds, though she rarely examined why.

Elise lowered herself onto the sofa and replayed what the attorney had said in her head. It didn’t make sense. Her father had made no attempt to contact her after her mother took her away. No letters. No birthday cards. No awkward phone calls attempting reconciliation.

Now, she’d learned he’d left Coldwater Hollow to her. It appeared that from the grave, he was summoning her home.

Rain struck the windows harder. Elise set the untouched tea on the coffee table.

A faint sound drifted through the apartment. Humming.

She froze. The melody was quiet enough that she could have mistaken it for the wind moving through the building’s vents. A slow, childlike tune that vanished almost as soon as she noticed it.

Elise listened. Only rain answered.

She pressed a hand against the base of her throat, feeling the frantic beat of her pulse.

Exhaustion could distort sounds. She knew that. The mind filled silences with familiar patterns, particularly during periods of stress. The patient from yesterday had gotten to her more than she wanted to admit.

Still, she recognized the melody…somehow.

She crossed to the highest shelf of the bookcase and reached for a small silver music box tucked behind several journals. It’s metal cold and faintly tarnished beneath her fingertips.

Elise didn’t remember packing it among her dolls when she left Coldwater Hollow. She didn’t know when it had appeared among her belongings. Her mother had always refused to discuss it like she did anything connected to their life at Coldwater Hollow.

She lifted the lid. A tiny ballerina turned while a warped lullaby spilled into the room. The same melody she’d heard earlier.

Elise’s breath caught as a memory pressed forward. Two little girls sitting cross-legged on a bedroom floor. One of them held the music box.

Dark curls framed the second girl’s face. Her smile familiar.

Elise tried to see more, but the image dissolved.

The mechanism inside the box caught with a sharp metallic click. The ballerina jerked and stopped. Elise snapped the lid shut. Her heart pounded hard enough to leave her light-headed.

Was there another girl at the house?

A name hovered just beyond reach. She closed her eyes, but the harder she searched for it, the more the memory retreated.

The music box slipped from her hands. She caught it against her chest before it hit the floor.

She grabbed her phone and called the attorney. “This is Elise again.”

“Thank you for calling me back, Ms. Warren. I’m sorry to contact you under these circumstances. I’m sure the news comes as a shock.”

Elise set the music box carefully on the shelf. “You said my father left instructions.”

Rain drummed against the windows while silence stretched between them.

“Ah yes,” he said as if sensing she didn’t want to engage in small talk. “He did.”

Elise stared at the rain-drenched window. “When did he write those instructions?”

“Six months ago.”

She waited for more information.

After a moment, he explained. “He left instructions that his body was to be cremated immediately following his death and his ashes were to be kept at the funeral home in town for you to claim.”

Her father had known he was dying. He’d planned this. Wanted her to come back to Coldwater Hollow. She had no idea what she was supposed to do with his ashes.

“What exactly am I supposed to find in the house?”

A pause followed. Finally, Harlow exhaled. “Your father said he left a box for you at the house. I’m sure it will give you the answers you need.”

Fear slithered into the pit of her stomach. “What type of box?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t explain.”

The answer only increased her apprehension. “You’re his attorney.”

“I handled Dr. Warren’s legal matters, not his personal matters or research.”

The word caught her attention. “Research?” That was a strange word to use.

“I may have misspoken.”

“I don’t think you did. Did he ever mention me?” The question escaped before Elise could stop it.

Harlow hesitated long enough to give her an answer she did not want. “Not often.”

The disappointment surprised her. She had spent years convincing herself she no longer cared what Thomas Warren thought or felt.

Apparently, some wounds did not heal simply because a person stopped examining them.

“What did he say when he did mention me?”

The attorney cleared his throat. “He said you had become very good at helping people remember what they had lost.”

Elise’s fingers squeezed the phone. “And?”

“He hoped you were equally skilled at recognizing what should remain forgotten.”

The room seemed to contract around her. “What does that mean?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know.” Harlow sighed.

“Did my father die naturally?”

Another pause, a subtle hesitation. “Yes. He had advanced pancreatic cancer. He died in the hospital.”

A sudden pressure built behind Elise’s eyes. The study. Tall bookshelves. Heavy curtains. A desk beneath the window.

Something else waited there in the memory, but she couldn’t see it yet.

“I’d be happy to meet you over at Coldwater Hollow this afternoon to go over the will. Your father told me that he left the key to the house beneath the old planter on the porch.”

She could refuse. Find an agent and sell the place. Let strangers catalog the contents. Whatever waited inside Coldwater Hollow could rot alongside the floors and walls.

Yet beneath the fear stirred something stronger. A child’s dark curls. A silver music box. A name she’d once known.

“That sounds like a good idea. Thank you. I’ll call you when I’m close.” Elise ended the call and stood alone in the softly lit apartment.

She thought about calling her mother, Rachel Cartwright, who had remarried for the third time five years back and was currently traveling abroad with her husband, Lloyd. But Elise knew what her mother’s advice would be. Don’t go back there.

Yet something inside Elise told her she had to know the truth. Once and for all.

She returned to the bedroom and pulled a small suitcase from the closet.

Packing took less than twenty minutes. Jeans. Sweaters. Toiletries. A flashlight. Her laptop and counseling journals.

Before closing the suitcase, she added the music box.

Elise canceled all her upcoming appointments for the rest of the week. By nine a.m. she was driving north beneath a dreary sky the color of old steel.

Soon, Portland disappeared in her rearview mirror. Crowded streets narrowed into wet highways bordered by forests stripped bare by the late fall temperatures. Fog gathered between the trees, swallowing portions of the road.

Elise kept the radio on because the silence left too much room for thought.

Whenever Elise asked her mother about her father, the answer was the same.

Some memories are too dangerous to resurrect.

At the time, Elise assumed her mother meant they were too painful. Now she wondered whether she had literally meant danger.

After driving for more than six hours, a weathered wooden sign appeared beside the road.

Welcome to Coldwater. Population 6,102.

Elise clutched the steering wheel in a death hold as she arrived in the town that appeared smaller than she remembered. A white church to her right sat near the road, its narrow steeple rising against the gray sky. A diner occupied the corner across from a gas station. The general store’s faded red awning sagged beneath the rain.

People noticed her car. An older man loading groceries paused to watch her pass. A woman outside the post office turned fully toward the road.

Probably their normal reactions to an unfamiliar vehicle in town.

She stopped at the general store for groceries. A bell chimed above the door when she entered. The woman behind the counter looked up. Recognition flashed across her face immediately. “Little Elise Warren. As I live and breathe.”

Elise stopped cold. “I’m sorry, do I know you?”

The woman appeared to be in her sixties. Her silver hair pulled back into a ponytail at the nape of her neck.

“Gloria Livingston. I own this place. I knew you when you were just a little girl.” Gloria placed both hands flat on the counter. “I heard Thomas died.”

“Apparently, news travels fast.”

“In a town this size, it doesn’t have far to go.”

Elise smiled. “That’s certainly true.” Still there was something unsettling about the older woman.

She selected coffee, bread, soup, bacon and eggs. Elise picked up things to make sandwiches. A package of sliced turkey, cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, mayonnaise, a carton of milk, butter, and a container of potato salad along with several more items she could prepare without much effort. Gloria watched her move through the aisles.

When Elise returned to the register, the woman scanned each item slowly. “Will you be staying at the house?” she asked while her hand hovered over the scanner.

“Only long enough to settle the estate.”

Gloria wore a troubled expression. “You really shouldn’t stay there alone.”

Goosebumps scattered across her arms. “Why not?”

The scanner beeped. Gloria looked toward the front windows as though checking whether anyone stood outside. “That place was never good for you or Rachel.”

Elise stared at her in shock. “You knew me and my mother? Not just from me coming into the store?”

Gloria continued scanning. “Everyone knew you, hon.” The words carried more weight than they should have.

“What about the other girl?” The one Elise kept remembering.

“What girl?” Gloria asked in confusion.

The name returned without warning. “Ivy.” The instant Elise spoke it, pressure exploded behind her eyes and a garden flashed through her mind. A little girl running through tall flowers. Laughter. A warning whispered near Elise’s ear. “Don’t let him make you forget.”

Elise grabbed the edge of the counter and struggled to hold onto the memory but it was too fleeting.

Gloria glanced toward the windows and the empty street in front of the store. “Honey, I don’t know anything about a girl named Ivy, but if you know what’s good for you, you’ll leave Coldwater and the past right now and never look back.”

The warning put Elise further on edge. “Why would you say such a thing? I just arrived. What aren’t you telling me?”

Gloria’s mouth thinned. “Nothing. Clearly, I’ve overstepped.”

“Yes, you have. But now that you did, I’d like to know what you mean.”

The woman wouldn’t look at her. “Nothing. I only remember how unhappy you and your mother were living there.” She straightened. “If that’s all, your total is thirty-eight dollars.”

“So, you did know us more than casually.” Elise stared at her in complete disbelief. Was the woman mentally ill?

“No, only from when you two came into the store. It was just an observation. Nothing more.”

Elise paid the bill and got out of there as fast as possible while refusing Gloria’s offer of a receipt.

As she carried the grocery bag to her car, the rain had shifted to a light mist. Elise placed the bags on the back seat and glanced back at the store. Gloria’s face was pressed against the window, her eyes watching. Elise shivered. All the fear and trepidation she’d had about making this trip returned with gangbusters.

The town around her appeared quiet, almost peaceful. Was it all just an illusion?

She grabbed her phone from her pocket and tried her mother’s number without an answer. Hopefully, Rachel would call back once she noticed the missed call.

Ivy. The name that had popped into her head. Was it real or some type of figment from childhood trauma?

With a final look at the store, Elise got back into her vehicle and pulled from the parking lot. As she drove through town, it felt as if there were eyes everywhere following her.

Just her imagination, she told herself.

Coldwater Hollow waited five miles up ahead. Elise wasn’t sure she was ready to face it again after so many years.

The windshield wipers swept away the light rain as the road weaved through the breathtaking Oregon countryside, occasionally revealing glimpses of the ocean beyond.

Towering pine trees lined both sides of the road. If it weren’t for her final destination, this drive would have been almost enjoyable.

Elise slowed to a stop near the road that would lead her home. It wasn’t too late to turn around. Do what Gloria had suggested and leave Coldwater behind for someone else to figure out.

She’d spent years wondering about her life here. She wasn’t a child anymore and her father wouldn’t be there waiting for her. If she wanted answers, she couldn’t turn back.

Elise pulled onto the county road and headed toward a hidden past she’d waited a lifetime to uncover.

Soon, the narrow road snaked deeper into the woods, where Sitka Spruce along with Western Red Cedar and Douglas Fir collected close to the road.

Her phone beeped a message that had come in while service was sketchy.

She hit play and her father’s attorney’s voice filled the car.

“Ms. Warren, I’m sorry to cancel so late but I’ve been delayed unexpectedly. I won’t be able to meet you at Coldwater Hollow today. Give me a call and let me know how you wish to proceed with reading the will. I can have a copy of it messengered to you if you prefer not to meet in person.” The message ended as she reached the open iron gate for Coldwater Hollow.

There would be no one there with her as she entered the house for the first time in over two decades. Did she really want to do this alone? She could go back into town and wait until tomorrow.

Or never.

Don’t be a coward.

She pushed down on the gas pedal and continued driving until she reached the entryway to Coldwater Hollow.

Elise braked and stared at her childhood home through the drizzle. The gate hung open and crooked from rusted hinges. Had the attorney accidentally left it open when he last visited or had someone else been there recently?

Dead vines wound their way through the gate’s bars, nearly concealing the faded wooden sign that announced, Coldwater Hollow.

Beyond the gate, the gravel drive vanished between the trees. Dusk had already begun to settle around the countryside despite it being late afternoon.

Her headlights picked up something farther down the drive. Elise leaned forward. She pulled in a breath and blinked, unable to trust her eyes. A little girl. Her dark curls framed a pale face. She wore a simple blue dress despite the November cold. What was she doing out here alone?

She blinked again and the child disappeared. Just her imagination. She hadn’t even arrived at the house and she was already seeing ghosts.

Elise drew in a slow breath, let it out, then shifted the car into Drive. For the first time in twenty-four years, she was coming home.

And every instinct she possessed told her she’d made a terrible mistake.

Chapter Two

The Return

Pine trees towered on either side. Their fallen needles blanketed the gravel drive and muffled the tire sounds as she followed the path she and her mother had traveled as they left the house for the final time.

Any memories of before that time remained just out of her reach.

At times, there were pieces that would rise to the surface triggered by something in her life. When it rained, the scent of damp pines would come to mind. On the occasions when she’d visited the beach in California, Elise remembered a different ocean setting and the sound of waves crashing somewhere beyond the trees. Yet every time she tried to grab onto more, the fleeting memory dissolved around her.

Soon, the trees along the drive thinned. Then the house appeared in front of her as if it had been waiting.

Her breath caught at the sight. Time had not been kind to the old Victorian.

Gray paint peeled from the siding in long, curling strips, and several shutters hung crooked beside the tall, narrow windows. A steeply pitched, gabled roof rose above the house, its dark shingles mottled with moss, while a round turret jutted from one corner, its upper windows staring blankly toward the road. Vines climbed the ornate columns supporting the wide wraparound porch, tangling through the decorative gingerbread trim beneath the eaves. Even in daylight, the sprawling house had a brooding quality, as though it had been standing there too long, keeping too many secrets.

It looked abandoned. Lonely. A ghost from a life lived long ago.

She parked in front of the porch and switched off the engine and killed the lights. Dusk settled around her, not with complete silence. Wind stirred through the trees overhead, and somewhere in the distance a raven called.

Elise remained behind the wheel for a long moment. This was the place she’d spent the first ten years of her life. The place her mother never spoke about.

When the urge to turn around and leave became too strong, Elise grabbed the door handle and stepped from the car. Cold air brought with it the scent of damp earth and pine trees. She breathed in several steady breaths and headed for the house before she chickened out.

Something caught her attention right away. Fresh tire tracks. They cut through the muddy grass near the drive. Someone had been here recently. There was no other vehicle around now. Whoever was here had gone. She glanced toward the house. No lights were on. Nothing but dark windows staring back at her.

Elise turned back to her vehicle and grabbed the grocery bags and her suitcase and then climbed the porch steps. The old boards groaned beneath her boots. She removed the old-fashioned brass skeleton key from beneath the planter where Daniel Harlow told her it would be. She slid it into the lock. The deadbolt clicked open while the pit in her stomach grew and a warning slipped through her mind.

Don’t go in there…

“You’re being ridiculous,” she told herself with a nervous laugh. The only monster from her past was dead.

Elise pushed the door open. A wave of stale air rolled out to greet her. The foyer stretched before her exactly as she’d remembered from the fragments that surfaced in her dreams.

A sweeping staircase curved elegantly to the second floor while a crystal chandelier hung overhead.

Someone had covered the furniture in white sheets in the living room. These appeared like long-forgotten ghosts. Elise shoved that thought aside. This was only an old house. There were no ghosts here. Just missing memories.

The covered furniture had her curious about how long it had been since her father actually lived here. She’d have to ask her father’s attorney another time.

Elise stepped inside and closed the door. Old houses settled. She knew that. Still, every sound seemed unnaturally loud.

She set her suitcase down and took the groceries into the kitchen, turning on lights as she went. Harlow had told her all the utilities remained on, which meant at least she’d have heat and warm water. A working fridge.

Several cabinet doors stood open. A drawer had been left halfway out. She closed them. The kitchen table near the window had one chair pulled out as if someone had planned to return but never did.

She could almost believe Harlow had sat here at one point recently, but why would he leave the cabinets and a drawer open? Whoever had been there was looking for something. She thought about the tire tracks outside.

The house-key would be an easy find for anyone searching. They’d returned it to its place so that no one would be the wiser. The thought of someone pilfering through the house gave Elise the creeps.

Stop it. Whoever had been here before was gone now, and they probably had a good reason for coming inside. She’d ask Harlow about it later when she called.

Elise unpacked the groceries before curiosity drew her farther into the house. Every room held another fragment of memory that wanted to surface. The dining room where Christmas dinners took place. Candles all around. Her mother laughing…the memory faded before she could hold onto it.

The living room was where she could almost see their Christmas tree standing near the bay window. Someone playing Christmas songs on the piano. Her mother maybe? Again, the memory disappeared like trying to hold onto smoke.

She climbed the ornate staircase where the chandelier cast its light around the area. She slowly moved down the hallway to the third door. Her old bedroom. As she neared, Elise noticed the door was slightly open. She hesitated for a second before she pushed it open wider.

This room had been part of her life for ten years. She remembered it. Her favorite pink quilt with horses on it still covered the bed. Books remained lined neatly on the shelves. Even the porcelain horse collection she’d loved as a little girl sat exactly where she’d left it.

She didn’t understand why her father had preserved her room. Was it easier to leave it as is? Did he not need the space? The questions lingered as she crossed to the dresser. Dust covered the surface, except for a clean, rectangular spot where something had been removed.

She opened drawers and found some of her childhood clothes, old storybooks, and a handful of school papers.

The bottom drawer stuck halfway. Elise pulled harder until it finally slid open. Inside was a single photograph. She picked it up and realized it was a family portrait. Her mother was smiling at the camera. Her father next to Rachel, his expression reserved. A younger Elise between them. She noticed that part of the photograph had been cut out. Another person maybe? She held the photo closer and noticed a tiny piece of blue cloth.

Her pulse exploded. Another memory surfaced. Two little girls racing across the front yard. One laughing. One calling her name. Then nothing.

The memory vanished before she could see the girl’s face.

Elise slipped the photograph into her pocket. Someone had deliberately removed another person. Was it the girl from her memories? If so, why?

The door downstairs slammed against the frame. She jumped and whirled toward the sound. The wind. She probably hadn’t closed the front door well and the wind caught it.

She released a slow breath. “Get a grip.” Elise headed back downstairs.

As she crossed the foyer. Something caught her eye. Fresh mud tracked on the hardwood floor made by an adult. They began near the front door and led straight to her father’s study. Had they been there before and she missed them?

Despite every instinct inside her telling her not to go there, Elise followed the footprints inside the study. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined the walls. Heavy curtains framed the windows. She remembered her father’s old oak desk. Nothing appeared to have been touched. A small wooden box sat in the center of the desk. A slip of paper under it.

Elise pulled the paper free. Her name was written across the front in unmistakable handwriting. Her father’s. Was this the box he’d left for her?

Her fingers shook as she unfolded the letter and read it.

Elise,

If you’re reading this, you’ve finally come home.

The truth about our family has been waiting here longer than you know. Some of it is inside this box. The rest you’ll have to uncover yourself.

Don’t trust what your mother told you. Don’t trust your memories. Trust what you can prove.

Chapter Three

The Deputy

Don’t trust your memories. Trust what you can prove.

The words fed the unease gathering inside her like dried wood to wildfire.

She’d spent years teaching her patients the importance of distinguishing between fact and emotional interpretation. Trauma could make ordinary details feel threatening. Fear filled gaps with the worst possible answers.

She glanced back at the footprints. Someone had entered the house. What if they were still here?

That last possibility settled the matter. Elise grabbed her phone from her coat pocket. One bar of service appeared, vanished, and returned. She dialed 911 before she could reconsider.

The dispatcher answered on the second ring. “Coldwater County Emergency Services. Can I have your name and the location of your emergency?”

“Elise Warren. I’m at Coldwater Hollow, about five miles outside town.” She hated that her voice actually shook.

There was a brief pause. “Coldwater Hollow?”

Something about the woman’s tone made Elise’s skin prickle. “Yes. My father died recently. I arrived a little while ago and found signs that someone has been inside.”

“Are you in the house now?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe the person is still there?”

Elise looked down at the footprints. “I’m not sure.”

The dispatcher’s voice became more direct. “Ms. Warren, leave the house if you can do so safely. A deputy is on the way.”

Elise glanced toward the study door. The foyer remained empty. “I’m going outside now.”

“Stay on the line until you reach your vehicle.”

She left the letter and wooden box where she had found them and moved toward the doorway. Her boots sounded unnaturally loud against the floor.

The foyer stretched between her and the front entrance. Nothing moved. Still, the sensation of being watched followed her out of the study.

Passing the staircase, she resisted the urge to look toward the second-floor landing. The house had been quiet since the door slammed earlier, but quiet no longer reassured her. It felt deliberate. Patient.

Elise reached the front door and turned the knob. It did not move. She tried again with fingers that shook. The deadbolt had been locked. Her breath caught. She hadn’t locked it when she came inside.

“Ms. Warren?” the dispatcher asked, bringing her back to the call. “Are you outside?”

“Not yet.” Elise twisted the deadbolt. It resisted for a second before sliding free with a heavy click. She yanked the door open.

Cold air rushed into the foyer. She stepped onto the porch and pulled the door shut behind her.

“Okay, I’m outside.”

“Go to your vehicle and lock yourself inside.”

Elise ran down the porch steps. The wind had picked up, sending damp leaves scattering across the drive. She reached her car, climbed behind the wheel, and locked the doors.

Only then did she release the breath trapped in her lungs. “I’m in my car and the doors are locked.”

“Good.” The dispatcher remained on the line until a deputy’s patrol vehicle appeared at the end of the drive fifteen minutes later.

Red and blue lights flashed through the trees, briefly staining the fog through the descending night. The deputy stopped behind Elise’s car. A man stepped out wearing a dark sheriff’s department jacket. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and moved with the measured awareness of someone who noticed everything around him.

He scanned the house first, then the muddy tire tracks near the drive. The woods beyond the house.

Elise watched him finish his assessment before he approached her window. She lowered it several inches.

“Ms. Warren?” His voice was calm and steady.

“Yes.”

“I’m Deputy Reid Carver.” He removed his hat, revealing dark hair dampened by the mist. “The dispatcher said you found evidence of an intruder in your father’s house.”

After the dispatcher confirmed Deputy Carver had arrived, Elise disconnected the call, unlocked the door, and stepped out. Now that help had arrived, she felt strangely foolish standing beside her car with her pulse still racing.

“I found fresh tire tracks out here and muddy footprints inside. The footprints lead into my father’s study, but they don’t lead back out.”

Reid’s expression intensified. “Did you touch anything in the study?”

“Only the note and the wooden box on my father’s desk.”

“What note?”

“My father…recently passed away. He left a letter and box for me on his desk.”

Reid glanced toward the house. “How long has he been gone?”

“He died earlier this week.”

“I’m sorry.” The words held no practiced sympathy. Just quiet sincerity.

Elise nodded, though grief remained far beneath everything else she felt.

Reid returned his hat to his head. “Get back inside your car and lock the doors. I’ll clear the house.”

“I’m going with you,” she insisted.

“No.” The answer came without hesitation.

Elise stared him down. “This is now my property.”

“And if someone might still be inside, that makes you the person most likely to be in danger.” His tone was firm without being dismissive. “I need you to wait in the vehicle. If you see anyone leave the house, call 911. Don’t approach them.”

Elise wanted to argue. The part of her that had built a life on independence resisted being ordered back into the car. She looked up at the house. Someone had locked the front door while she stood in the study.

Perhaps Reid was right.

“Alright.” She climbed back into the vehicle.

He waited until she locked the doors before turning toward the house.

Elise watched him cross the drive. He paused near the tire tracks, crouched briefly to inspect them, then continued to the porch.

At the front door, he drew his weapon. Only then did the full danger of the situation strike her.

Reid disappeared inside. The door remained open behind him. Silence settled over the property once more. Elise gripped the steering wheel and watched the empty doorway, counting each second that passed.

Thirty. Forty-five. A full minute.

The house gave no sign of what was happening inside until she spotted movement near the second-floor windows of her bedroom.

A shadow crossed behind the glass. Elise leaned forward. It was too small to be Reid.

For one terrifying heartbeat, she thought she saw a little girl standing near the windows of her room. Dark curls. A pale blue dress. The figure turned. Elise blinked. The window was empty.

She leaned closer to the windshield. No movement. No child. Only the wavering reflection of tree branches moving in the wind.

“You’re imagining things,” she whispered, though the words weren’t convincing.

Another minute crawled by before Reid emerged from the front door.

He holstered his weapon before descending the porch steps and walking directly toward her car.

Elise climbed out before he reached her. “Did you find anyone?”

He shook his head. “No one’s inside.”

Relief washed over her, followed almost immediately by embarrassment. Maybe Gloria’s warning and the unsettling atmosphere of the house had gotten to her after all.

Reid glanced back at the house. “Why don’t we go back inside and we’ll take a closer look around the study. See if anything is missing.”

“Of course,” she agreed even though she would have no idea if anything was missing or not.

“I’ll just grab my fingerprint kit before we head inside.”

Elise waited next to his patrol vehicle while he retrieved the kit and then they headed inside.

The foyer seemed less intimidating with the deputy beside her, though the old house still held an oppressive silence.

Reid paused just inside the door.

“What is it?” Elise looked around trying to see what he did.

He pointed toward the hardwood floor. “The footprints.”

Elise followed his gaze. “What about them?”

He crouched beside the first print. “The mud is drying.”

“Meaning?”

“It’s been hours since they were here.”

“So maybe this morning?”

“Probably. They could have been there when you came in.”

That made her feel slightly better. It’s possible she hadn’t noticed them when she first came in. Elise so wanted to believe that.

Together they entered the study. The wooden box remained centered on the desk. Her father’s note rested beside it where she’d left it.

Reid walked directly toward one of the bookcases. “Did you notice this when you came into the room earlier?”

“Notice what?”

He ran his flashlight beam along the side of the shelves before stopping it near waist height. “There.”

“What is that?”

“A latch.”

That’s when she saw that the bookcase had been moved away from the wall slightly.

She stepped closer. Hidden within the carved wood was a small brass release no larger than a coin.

Elise shook her head. “I had no idea it was there.” Or did she? She’d lived here as a child. It would stand to reason she’d have discovered it at some point.

Reid examined the release. “Don’t touch anything.”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

Reid set the fingerprint kit on her father’s desk. He removed several small bottles, a soft fiberglass brush, black fingerprint powder, lifting tape, and evidence cards. He carefully dusted the edge of the wooden panel first, working the brush in slow, practiced circles. Fine black powder settled across the varnished surface.

They both leaned closer. Nothing usable.

He continued around the hidden latch and along the inside edge of the panel before moving to the small wooden box resting on Thomas’s desk.

Again, the black powder revealed only smudges too distorted to identify.

He sighed and set the brush aside. “Either whoever’s been here wore gloves...”

“Or they wiped everything down afterward,” Elise finished.

“That’s my guess.” He carefully photographed the surfaces anyway before closing the kit.

“I’ll still have the crime scene unit process everything,” he said. “Sometimes they can recover prints that field kits can’t.”

Elise looked toward the bookcase. “So whoever came in here knows enough to cover their tracks.”

Reid met her gaze. “Which tells me this isn’t someone acting on impulse.” He glanced back at the hidden passage. “Let’s see what’s inside the passage.” Wearing latex gloves, Reid pressed the latch. A soft click sounded. The shelves swung open on concealed hinges, revealing a narrow corridor beyond. Dust floated through the beam of his flashlight. “It’s a servant’s passage.”

“A what?” She peered inside. Nothing about it appeared familiar.

The corridor couldn’t have been more than three feet wide. Rough wooden walls and a series of shelves lined one side.

“A lot of older homes were built with them. It allows staff to move between rooms without being seen.”

“So whoever left the footprints—”

“Could’ve exited through here.”

A shiver sped down her spine. “Or they might still be in the house.”

“Let me check it out. There’s probably an exit leading outside somewhere.” He stepped into the passage while Elise remained in the study, watching his flashlight disappear into the darkness.

Seconds later his voice drifted back. “There’s another door. Stay there. I’ll be right back.” A hinge creaked, followed by his footsteps fading.

After what felt like an eternity, Reid returned. “There’s a narrow stairwell that leads upstairs, but I also found an exit at the back of the house. The pine needles from all the trees around the place make it impossible to tell if anyone left that way.”

“But it’s possible, right?” Because she didn’t want to think about someone being inside still.

He nodded. “I’d say it’s likely. And the passage explains the missing exit footprints from the house.”

It didn’t explain why someone had been there and how they’d known about the hidden passage. That spoke of someone with intimate knowledge of the house.

Reid’s attention shifted to the wooden box. “You haven’t opened it.”

She shook her head.

He didn’t press her for why. Reid examined the lock without touching it before he took out a small notebook and jotted down several notes. “Do you have any idea the last time anyone was in the house?”

“I’m not sure. I’m assuming my father’s attorney, Daniel Harlow, came here at some point.” Elise told him about their conversations.

“Why don’t I give him a call now and see what he knows.” He slipped the notebook back into his pocket. Elise told him the phone number and Reid typed it into his phone. While he spoke quietly on the phone her mind went over the events of what happened since she woke up that morning.

“Harlow said he hasn’t been here at all.”

Elise jumped at the sound of his voice.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

She’d been on edge since receiving Harlow’s call. Being back at Coldwater Hollow wasn’t helping either.

“I’ll double check his alibi, but I don’t think he’s involved in whatever is happening here.” He hesitated briefly. “If you aren’t comfortable staying here tonight, there’s a bed-and-breakfast in town.” Reid had picked up on her anxiety.

Elise looked around the study. She should leave. Everything inside her insisted that would be the smart decision. But she’d spent too many years avoiding the questions that had followed her from this house. Now that her father was gone, this might be her only chance to find the answers he never would have given her.

She shook her head. “If I leave now, I may never come back.”

His expression softened as if he understood. “I figured you might say that.” He handed her a business card. “My cell number’s on the back.”

She smiled. “Thank you.” Elise slipped it into her pocket.

“Give me a second. I’ll check all the locks on the windows and doors.” He started in the office and made sure all were secure. Elise followed him through the house checking locks.

When they returned downstairs, he hesitated in the foyer. “If anything feels wrong...”

“I’ll call.”

“I mean immediately.”

She nodded. “I will, I promise.”

He paused at the doorway. “You mentioned seeing a little girl near the gate.”

Heat crept into her cheeks. “I know how it sounds.”

“It sounds like you’ve had a long day.” He didn’t laugh. Didn’t dismiss her. He simply accepted that she’d believed she’d seen someone.

“I was probably tired.”

“Probably.” The answer was gentle enough that she appreciated it. Reid started toward the door, then stopped. “One more thing.”

“Yes?”

He glanced back at the desk. His eyes settled on the wooden box. “I’d wait until morning before opening it.”

“Why?”

He offered the faintest hint of a smile and walked to the front door. “Because whatever’s inside isn’t going anywhere.” With a two-finger salute, he stepped outside and closed the door. A few moments later, his patrol vehicle disappeared down the long gravel drive.

The red and blue lights faded behind the trees. Silence returned. And Coldwater Hollow seemed larger somehow.

Elise locked the front door before making herself a cup of coffee because right now the thought of sleep was impossible.

The mug warmed her hands as she carried it into the study to where the wooden box waited exactly where she’d left it.

Her father’s letter rested beside it.

She sat in his chair. Outside, rain whispered against the windows. Inside, only the old grandfather clock in the hallway marked the passing seconds.

She stared at the brass lock. Then at the desk drawers.

One was cracked open. Elise didn’t remember leaving it that way. Couldn’t remember if it had been open when she first came in.

Her hand hovered over it for a second before she pulled it open.

Inside lay a single brass key tied with a faded blue ribbon.

Chapter Four

Questions

The wipers swept steadily across the windshield as Reid Carver guided his patrol SUV down the winding road leading away from Coldwater Hollow.

Rain blurred the headlights into pale ribbons against the darkness. The towering pines crowded close to the narrow road, their branches swaying beneath the autumn wind. Normally, Reid enjoyed this part of the county. Tonight, it felt unusually confining.

He glanced in the rearview mirror. The Victorian had disappeared behind the trees. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling he’d left someone alone who shouldn’t be.

His radio crackled. “Unit Twelve, status check.”

Reid reached for the microphone. “Scene secure.”

“Copy that.”

He set the microphone back in place, but his thoughts refused to settle. Something about Elise Warren bothered him. Not in the way frightened people usually did. She hadn’t exaggerated what happened. If anything, she’d gone out of her way to explain away every strange thing she’d experienced. The little girl near the gate. The shadow upstairs. Each time, she’d dismissed it herself before he’d said a word. People inventing stories usually push harder to be believed. Elise had done the opposite. She’d almost seemed embarrassed by what she’d seen.

His headlights caught a deer standing near the shoulder. It froze for a moment before disappearing into the trees. Reid slowed instinctively.

His father had always warned him that where there was one deer, there were usually three.

The memory brought a faint smile. His father had been a deputy too. Thirty-two years wearing the badge. Reid had practically grown up inside the sheriff’s office. He’d learned long ago that instincts mattered. Not because they were magic. Because they came from years of noticing details other people ignored.

Tonight his instincts kept circling back to Coldwater Hollow. Not because of the house. But because of Thomas Warren.

The name sounded familiar. He couldn’t remember why but he planned to find out.

Fifteen minutes later he pulled into the gravel lot behind the Coldwater County Sheriff’s Office.

The brick building looked exactly as it had for decades. A single light glowed inside the front office. Sheriff Ben Lawson’s pickup still occupied its usual parking place. Of course it did. Ben practically lived here.

Reid stepped inside, shrugging out of his rain-soaked jacket. The familiar scent of coffee, old paper, and floor wax greeted him.

The dispatch station was at the center of the room. Martha Ellis looked up from her computer. “Everything alright out there?”

“No burglar in sight.”

She raised an eyebrow. “But?”

“But something doesn’t feel right.”

She smiled knowingly. “I’ve heard you say that before.”

“And every time I ignored it, I regretted it.”

She couldn’t argue with that. “What’ve you got?”

Reid leaned against the counter. “Can you run Thomas Warren for me?”

Martha frowned. “The psychiatrist that passed away recently?”

There it was again. That tiny spark of recognition.

“You know him?”

“Everybody around here back in the day knew Thomas Warren.” She typed quickly. “He lived at Coldwater Hollow. He was pretty famous twenty or thirty years ago. He became a bit of a recluse since then.”

“What can you tell me about him?” Reid asked and waited.

“He did trauma research, I believe.”

Research. That was the same word Elise had used.

“What kind of trauma research?”

Martha shrugged. “I don’t remember. Memory, maybe.”

Memory. “Anything else?”

“Hang on.” She clicked through several screens. “He died a few days ago of cancer.”

“I know that.”

“No criminal history.”

“No complaints?” Reid asked.

She looked again. “Nothing recent.”

Recent. The word caught his attention. “What about older reports?”

Martha looked over the top of her glasses. “How old do you want?”

“Twenty-five years.”

She whistled softly. “That’s going back a ways.”

“I’ve got time.”

“And it’s a slow evening.” She rose and disappeared through a door leading to records.

Reid wandered toward the coffee pot while he waited. The office was unusually quiet. Rain drummed against the windows. Someone had left a half-finished crossword puzzle on the breakroom table. Normal things. Comfortably ordinary.

Nothing like the feeling he’d gotten from Coldwater Hollow.

Martha returned carrying a thin manila folder. “Found one.” She handed it to him.

“Thanks.” Reid carried the folder over to his desk before opening it.

The incident report had yellowed with age.

October 14.

Twenty-four years earlier.

Reporting party: Rachel Warren.

Reason: Domestic disturbance.

Responding officer: Deputy Frank Dugan.

Interesting. Reid sat down. He continued reading.

The deputy responded at approximately 8:45 p.m. Homeowner, Thomas Warren advised argument had been verbal only.

Mrs. Warren declined medical attention. No visible injuries observed. Matter considered resolved. No charges requested.

Routine enough.

Until he reached Deputy Dugan’s handwritten notes.

The young daughter appeared frightened. Mrs. Warren advised she intended to leave the residence. Recommend follow-up.

Yet no follow-up had ever happened.

Reid flipped to the back. Occupants listed: Thomas Warren. Rachel Warren. Elise Warren.

Only three names. No mention of another child.

Not surprising. The child Elise had told him about having flashbacks of might have been a friend of the family.

Still… He found himself staring at the page longer than necessary.

Someone stopped next to Reid’s desk. He looked up to find Sheriff Lawson. “Are you planning to go home tonight? Your shift ended ten minutes ago.”

Reid looked up. “Eventually.”

Ben noticed the file. “Warren place?”

“You’ve heard?”

“Martha mentioned it.”

Reid nodded. “Something feels off.”

Ben folded his arms. “Like what? The house?”

“The woman.” Reid chose his words carefully. “She wasn’t trying to convince me of what she’d seen.”

“No?”

Reid thought about Elise standing in the rain, clutching her coat around herself while trying to apologize for seeing something she couldn’t explain. “No. She was trying to convince herself.”

“Sometimes that’s the difference between someone lying and someone who’s genuinely confused.”

Reid closed the file. “I’d like to look a little deeper into this.”

Ben nodded. “Do it.”

As the sheriff walked away, Reid looked down at the old report one last time. A frightened little girl. A mother desperate to leave. A famous psychiatrist whose life’s work centered on traumatic memory loss.

Now his daughter had returned after nearly a quarter century, unable to remember her own childhood.

Reid slipped the report back into the folder. This had started as a routine trespassing call.

His instincts told him it had just become something much bigger.

Chapter Five

The Key

The brass key lay in Elise’s palm, faded blue ribbon trailing across her fingers.

For several seconds she didn’t move. The study remained silent around her except for the steady ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway. Each measured beat seemed to press her toward a decision she wasn’t ready to make.

Open the box. Find out what her father had left behind. Prove whether the fragments in her mind belonged to memory or imagination.

Elise curled her fingers around the key. The metal was cold. Older than the lock, perhaps, its edges worn smooth from use. The ribbon had once been bright blue, but time had faded it to the same washed-out shade as the sleeve in the damaged photograph.

That connection might mean nothing. Still, she found herself reaching into her pocket for the picture. She laid it on the desk beside the key.

Her mother smiled from the photograph, one hand resting on Elise’s shoulder. Thomas stood on the other side, distant even in a family portrait. Young Elise faced the camera, her expression serious.

Beside her remained the narrow strip of blue fabric.

Elise ran one fingertip along the jagged edge. The photograph hadn't been torn accidentally. Whoever had removed the person had used scissors and taken care to cut close to Elise’s body.

Why preserve the picture at all? Why not destroy it?

Her gaze shifted to the key. The ribbon and the sleeve appeared nearly identical in color.

A coincidence, she reminded herself.

Yet her father’s warning whispered through her thoughts.

Trust what you can prove.

What was he trying to warn her of? And if he knew he was dying, why not tell her the truth outright? He could have called her, sent a letter. Even an email.

Something must have prevented it. But what?

She could prove the photograph had been altered. She could prove someone had entered the house. She could prove the key had been hidden in her father’s desk.

Nothing established that the girl from her memories had ever existed.

Reid’s comment returned to her.

Whatever’s inside the box isn’t going anywhere.

For once, she decided to take someone else’s advice.

Elise slipped the photograph back into her pocket and placed the key beside the box.

Not yet.

She rose from her father’s chair and surveyed the study. The room appeared almost untouched by time. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves covered three walls. Heavy curtains framed the windows. Her father’s desk stood at the center, its surface nearly bare except for the box, the letter, and an old brass lamp.

Everything had a precise place.

The books were arranged by subject and height. Pens lay parallel inside a leather tray. Even the papers in the desk drawer had been stacked with their corners perfectly aligned.

Control had mattered to Thomas Warren. Elise remembered that much.

Her father disliked noise. He disliked disorder. He disliked questions asked at the wrong time. Most of all, he disliked emotions he couldn’t explain.

She moved toward the bookshelves. Clinical psychology. Trauma response. Childhood development. Hypnosis. Memory formation.

Some titles were familiar from her own education. Others were decades out of date, their faded spines bearing the names of theories long since discredited.

Elise pulled one free.

Memory Reconstruction in Traumatized Children.

Notes filled the margins in her father’s precise handwriting. Short observations. Underlined passages. Questions directed at no one.

On one page, a sentence had been boxed in dark ink.

Children often create narratives to protect themselves from events they cannot process.

Elise stared at the words. A chill moved through her despite the warmth of the room.

She closed the book and returned it to the shelf.

Her attention shifted to a framed photograph tucked between two heavy volumes. Dust covered the glass, but the frame itself sat slightly forward, as though someone had moved it recently.

She lifted it from the shelf.

The picture showed Elise at perhaps nine or ten years old, standing beside the stone fountain in the garden. Her hair fell loose over her shoulders. She wore a pale-yellow sweater and jeans. One hand curled around the edge of the fountain. She was smiling. The expression surprised her. Her mother had told her how unhappy they’d both been at Coldwater Hollow.

This girl looked happy. But she wasn’t looking at the camera.

Her face was turned slightly to the left, her smile directed toward someone standing outside the frame. Elise brought the photograph closer. At the far edge, almost hidden by the border, was that a shadow of another person? Small enough to be a child.

Her pulse quickened. “Ivy,” she whispered. The name felt natural now. Familiar.

A sudden image struck her. Sunlight spilled across the garden. The scent of lilacs all around. A girl stood on the fountain’s stone rim with her arms spread wide, laughing as Elise begged her to get down.

“You’re going to fall.”

“I never fall.”

“You do all the time.”

“Then you’ll catch me.”

The memory vanished. Elise gripped the frame until the corner pressed painfully into her palm. Had that happened? Or had her mind created the scene from the photograph?

She knew how memory worked. It was not a recording. It could be influenced by suggestion, emotion, or even expectation. A partial image could become an entire story if the mind needed one badly enough.

Yet the laughter had felt real. The fear beneath it had felt real too.

She turned the photograph over and removed it from the frame. Nothing was written on the back. No date or name. Only a faint stain where an adhesive label might once have been.

Elise returned the picture to the shelf, positioning it exactly as she’d found it.

A floorboard creaked overhead. She froze.

The sound came again, followed by a faint scrape. Elise looked toward the ceiling.

Reid had cleared the house. No one was inside. The passage had explained how the intruder left the study, and the drying footprints suggested the person had been gone for hours. But what would keep the intruder from coming back the same way?

The thought was terrifying. She retrieved Reid’s card and started to dial his number when she slowly put the card away. It was probably just an old house. Still, the thought did little to reassure her.

She found the biggest chair she could and pushed it in front of the bookcase. It would provide little resistance to someone determined, but it made her feel slightly less terrified.

A third sound drifted from above. Not a footstep. Something lighter. A wooden-sounding tap, followed by a sliding noise.

Elise crossed the study and stepped into the foyer. The staircase curved upward into shadows. She had left the upstairs hallway light on, but the weak bulb did little to illuminate the second-floor landing.

Again, she considered calling Reid. The business card rested in her pocket. His number was written on the back in firm black ink.

She imagined how the conversation would sound. I heard something upstairs.

He would return because he had asked her to call immediately if anything felt wrong. He would search the house again. He would find nothing.

And Elise would become the frightened woman who couldn’t distinguish an old house settling from an intruder. She wasn’t ready for that.

Taking the flashlight from the side table, she started upstairs. The wood creaked beneath every step. At the landing, she paused and listened. Nothing.

Her bedroom door remained open at the end of the hall. A narrow wedge of lamplight spilled across the floor.

Elise moved toward her room. A small porcelain horse lay on its side near the doorway. She stared at it. The figurine had been sitting on the dresser earlier with the rest of the collection.

That explained the sliding sound she’d heard. It did not explain how the horse had fallen.

Elise picked it up. The tiny white body was unbroken, though one painted blue eye had chipped away. A memory brushed against her. A little girl kneeling beside the dresser…

“You can have this one.”

“Why?”

“Because it looks like you.”

“That horse is missing an eye.”

“I know.”

The memory slipped away before Elise could see the girl’s face.

She straightened slowly. The temperature in the hallway seemed to drop, though she knew that was only fear tightening across her skin. She returned the horse to the dresser and studied the room. Nothing else appeared disturbed.

The books remained on the shelves. Drawers were closed. The quilt lay smooth across the bed. Then she noticed the door across the hall. It stood open several inches. Yet it had been closed earlier, hadn’t it? She wasn’t sure.

She crossed toward it with one hand wrapped around the flashlight. The room beyond smelled of dust and old fabric. She pushed the door wider. A sewing room waited inside.

A narrow table stood beneath the window with an antique machine mounted on top. Shelves held stacks of folded cloth, their colors faded beneath years of dust. A dress form occupied one corner, draped in yellowed muslin.

Near the wall sat a wooden rocking chair. Nothing moved. There was nothing threatening.

Yet Elise remained in the doorway as recognition stirred. Her mother had used this room.

She remembered Rachel bent over the sewing machine, guiding blue fabric beneath the needle. Sunlight warmed the floor. A child sat nearby, swinging her legs from the rocking chair.

The little girl wore a blue dress.

Elise’s breath faltered. The memory shifted. Her mother looked up sharply.

“Thomas can’t know she’s here.”

The words were so clear Elise nearly turned, expecting to find Rachel behind her. The room was empty.

Her heartbeat thudded against her ribs as she stepped inside.

A shallow drawer beneath the sewing table stood partly open. Elise pulled it wider.

Thread. Scissors. Buttons stored in small glass jars.

At the bottom lay a folded piece of paper. She removed it carefully.

The paper had become brittle with age. Crayon marks showed faintly through the fold.

Elise opened it. Two little girls stood beneath a yellow sun. Their hands were joined.

One had dark hair. The other’s had been colored brown. Behind them loomed a large black house with too many windows.

Above the dark-haired girl, a child had written a single letter. E.

Above the second girl, a name had once appeared. Someone had scratched through it so violently the crayon had torn the paper.

Elise stared at the damaged drawing. The room tilted around her. She lowered herself into the rocking chair before her knees gave way. The chair creaked beneath her weight.

One girl was Elise. The other had to be Ivy.

And someone had tried very hard to erase her.

Elise sat motionless in the rocking chair, the child’s drawing trembling in her hands.

The room seemed to close in around her. She traced the torn grooves with the tip of her finger. Who would do something like that?

The questions circled through her mind until another possibility emerged. Her father.

Thomas Warren had spent his career studying memory. If anyone understood the power of memories—and how easily they could be altered—it was him.

The thought sent another chill through her.

She folded the drawing carefully and slipped it into her pocket beside the altered photograph. Two clues. Both pointing toward another little girl.

Both modified by someone who seemed determined to erase every trace of her.

A gust of wind rattled the old windowpane. Elise stood and crossed to it.

The glass overlooked the side garden, now little more than tangled shrubs and waist-high weeds. Beyond it, towering pines swayed beneath the strengthening wind.

Lightning flickered far out over the ocean. A few seconds later, thunder rolled across the hills. More rain would be here soon.

She rested her hand against the cool glass. Another memory surfaced, softer than the others.

Summer. The garden was alive with roses. Two little girls chasing butterflies between the flower beds while Rachel Warren laughed from the porch.

The image warmed her for the briefest moment. Then another memory slammed into it.

Her father. Standing in the garden. His voice calm. Almost clinical. “You don’t need her anymore.”

Fear tightened around Elise’s chest. The memory dissolved before she could hear the reply. She closed her eyes. “What happened here?”

The question hung unanswered.

When she opened her eyes again, movement near the edge of the woods caught her attention.

She straightened. A figure stood between two cedar trees.

Tall. Watching the house. Her pulse lurched. She blinked. The figure disappeared.

Nothing remained except darkness beneath the branches. Elise slowly released a breath. The distance and failing light made it impossible to be certain she’d actually seen someone.

Still... The feeling of being watched returned stronger than before.

No! She wasn’t doing this again.

Elise stepped back from the window. She refused to let every shadow become another mystery.

Drawing a steadying breath, she left the sewing room and returned downstairs.

The house greeted her with familiar silence. She moved through the foyer, checking each room as she passed. The dining room remained untouched. The parlor exactly as she’d left it. The kitchen felt oddly comforting after everything else. She switched on the light and filled the kettle.

While waiting for the water to boil, she found herself studying the refrigerator.

Family magnets still clung to the front.

An old calendar hung beside it. The pages had stopped on October. Twenty-four years earlier.

Her breath caught. That couldn’t be a coincidence.

She stepped closer. The calendar was dated October 2002. The month she’d left Coldwater Hollow. She reached for it, then stopped.

Everything in this house seemed carefully arranged. Preserved. As though time itself had been frozen.

The kettle whistled. Elise jumped and then scolded herself for overreacting.

Cup in hand, Elise returned to the study. Rain continued pattering against the windows. The wooden box waited where she’d left it. The brass key rested beside it.

She set the mug down. For several long moments she simply stared at both objects.

Her father had planned this. Thomas wanted her to come back here.

The only question was why?

Because whatever waited inside meant nothing unless she stood inside Coldwater Hollow when she found it.

The realization settled heavily over her. Elise picked up the key. This time she didn’t hesitate. The ribbon brushed across her wrist as she guided the key into the lock. It fit perfectly.

She closed her eyes for the briefest moment before turning it. The old mechanism resisted for a moment before yielding with a solid click. The sound echoed through the silent study.

Elise pocketed the key and then lifted the lid. Inside, there were only three items. A leather-bound journal. A tarnished silver locket. And a single envelope.

Across the front, in her father’s unmistakable handwriting, were five simple words.

Read this before anything else.

Elise stared at the envelope. Questions crowded her thoughts faster than she could sort them. Why a journal? Whose locket was it? Why had her father insisted she read the letter first?

Outside, thunder shook the windows. The lights flickered once before steadying again.

Elise’s fingers closed around the envelope when a sharp rap on the front door rolled through the old house.

She jerked upright. A second knock followed. Then a third.

Whoever stood outside wasn’t asking if anyone was home.

They already knew.

Chapter Six

The Journal

Elise’s heart pounded hard enough to make her lightheaded. The study suddenly felt too far from the entrance. She lowered the envelope.

Another knock echoed through the house. Not hurried or impatient. But determined. Whoever was at the door wasn’t going away.

Elise slipped the envelope back into the box and closed the lid without locking it. She slipped the phone from her pocket. No service.

She crossed the study, moving quietly toward the foyer. The porch light cast a weak yellow glow across the entryway, but the decorative stained glass in the door distorted everything beyond it.

She stopped several feet from the door. “Who’s there?”

“It’s me, Elise. Deputy Carver.”

Relief rushed through her so quickly she had to brace one hand against the wall.

She crossed the remaining distance and unlocked the deadbolt. Reid stood beneath the porch roof, rainwater dripping from the brim of his hat and darkening the shoulders of his jacket.

Behind him, the driveway disappeared into the night.

“I hope I didn’t wake you,” he said with a smile.

She shook her head and tried to hide how happy she was to see him. “No, I wasn’t asleep.”

His gaze moved over her face. “I figured.”

She stepped aside. “Please, come in.”

Reid glanced past her into the foyer before entering. He closed the door and tested the deadbolt.

“Did you forget something?”

“No.” His attention traveled toward the staircase, the shadowed hallway, and the open study door. Even off duty, if he had been off duty at all, he seemed incapable of entering a room without assessing every possible threat. “Something’s been bothering me,” he said at last.

“The footprints?”

“Among other things.”

“What other things?”

“The unlocked study window. The hidden passage. The person who knew where the key to this house was kept.” His eyes locked onto hers. “And the fact that someone entered the property hours before you arrived and it clearly wasn’t the attorney. I checked on his whereabouts, and he wasn’t anywhere close to Coldwater.”

“The crime scene unit processed the study after we left. They didn’t recover any identifiable prints from the box, the bookcase, or the hidden latch. Whoever entered the house either wore gloves or wiped down everything they touched.”

Elise folded her arms. “You already searched the house.”

“I did.”

“And found no one.”

“That doesn’t mean they won’t come back.”

She’d thought the same thing. “You think whoever was here might still be watching the house? For what reason?”

“I think we don’t know enough to rule it out, and to answer your question about reason, I can’t answer that either.”

The answer was honest, which did little to calm her.

Reid removed his hat. His dark hair was damp from the rain. “Did anything else happen after I left?”

Elise thought of the porcelain horse falling from the dresser. The open sewing-room door. The figure she thought she had seen standing near the trees.

None of it felt substantial enough to mention.

She hesitated before saying, “I found some things.”

“What kind of things?”

“A drawing in my mother’s sewing room. There were two little girls in it. One was me. Someone had scratched out the name above the other one.”

She had Reid’s full attention. “The same girl you believe was in the damaged photograph?”

“I think so.”

“You still have the drawing?”

She patted the pocket of her sweater. “Yes.”

“What else?”

Elise looked toward the study. “I opened the box.”

Reid followed her gaze. “I see.”

“You told me to wait until morning.”

“I also told you to call if anything felt wrong.”

“I didn’t say anything felt wrong.”

He gave her a pointed look.

“More wrong than it already did,” she amended.

The faintest hint of amusement touched his face and disappeared. “What was inside?”

“A journal, a locket, and an envelope.”

“Your father’s journal?”

“I haven’t checked yet.”

“And the envelope?”

“I was about to open it when you knocked.”

Reid nodded toward the study. “Then maybe my timing was better than I thought.”

Elise led him into the room. The desk lamp cast a circle of amber light across the box. Beyond it, the study remained shadowed. Rain tapped steadily against the windows, and wind moved through the trees outside with a low rushing sound.

Reid stopped beside the bookcase concealing the passage. “You pushed the chair in front of it I assume?”

“Yes. I realize it wouldn’t keep anyone determined out, but it made me feel better.”

He nodded and checked the hidden latch before crossing to the study window to confirm the lock was still in place.

“You don’t have to inspect everything again,” Elise said.

“I know.” He tested the window anyway.

She sat in her father’s chair and lifted the box lid. The leather journal rested beneath the envelope. The tarnished silver locket lay beside it, its chain coiled neatly as if someone had placed it there only moments earlier.

Reid remained standing on the opposite side of the desk. “You want me to leave while you read it?”

The question surprised her. She shook her head. “No.”

“You’re sure?”

Elise looked at the envelope. “I don’t think I want to be alone when I find out what my father thought was important enough to hide.”

Reid pulled the other chair closer but did not sit until she opened the envelope.

The paper inside had been folded once. Her father’s handwriting covered most of the page. Elise drew in a breath and began to read silently.

Elise,

If you are reading this, then you’ve come home and there’s a good chance someone else has already been there too.

Her pulse stumbled.

“What is it?” Reid asked.

She lifted one hand, needing a moment. Her father had known someone would come.

She continued reading.

Do not tell anyone what you find until you understand why it matters. Especially about Ivy.

Ivy. That name again. The study suddenly turned colder.

“What does it say?” Reid asked.

She trusted Reid and needed his help to unravel what was happening. Elise handed him the letter without answering.

He read the first lines before his expression turned grim. “Who are they?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

Reid continued reading until he reached the part about Ivy. His gaze lifted to her. “You told me that name came back to you at the general store.”

“Yes.”

“Did your father know you remembered her?”

“No idea. I haven’t spoken to him in twenty-four years.”

“Then either he believed you would remember eventually, or he expected someone else to mention her.”

Neither possibility reassured her.

Reid handed the letter back.

“He tells me to start with the journal entry dated October 12.” Her fingers closed around the paper.

“Does that date mean anything to you?”

She shook her head, then remembered the calendar hanging in the kitchen. “Wait, the calendar in the kitchen is open to October. The year my mother and I left.”

“That could have been your father’s doing.”

“Or the person who came here before me playing games.”

Reid looked toward the journal. “Let’s see if we can find out what he was trying to tell you.”

Elise removed it from the box. The leather cover was cracked along the spine. No name or title appeared on the front. When she opened it, she recognized her father’s writing immediately.

She turned to the entry he’d told her to start with. “October 12. There’s only one sentence. Rachel has decided to leave.”

“That’s it?” Reid asked, as surprised as she was.

“I guess so.”

“I don’t get it. Why don’t you go back to the beginning and see if there’s something leading up to this that might give us some indication as to what your father was trying to tell you.”

She flipped back to the beginning. The first entry was dated nearly twenty-five years earlier. Thomas wrote in the detached language of a physician recording observations. “Patient experienced another episode during the night. No recollection by morning.”

“Patient?” Reid asked.

Elise shrugged. “I have no idea who he means.” She turned several pages. The entries shifted between his work and his personal life without clear separation. “Rachel remains resistant to the proposed treatment.” Elise’s stomach tightened.

“Rachel is your mother?” he asked, but she suspected he knew the answer.

“Yes.” Another entry followed. “E. continues to insist the dreams are memories. This belief must not be reinforced.” She stopped.

Reid stared at her reaction. “E?”

“Elise.”

“You’re certain?”

“My father abbreviated names in the margins of his books. He used initials when writing about patients.”

“Were you his patient?”

The question struck harder than she expected. “No. I was his daughter.”

Reid didn’t challenge her, but he wasn’t fully convinced.

Elise turned another page. “Rachel objected again today. Her emotional responses are interfering with progress.”

Elise read the sentence twice. Progress toward what?

A memory surfaced. Her mother was standing in the kitchen with both hands pressed flat against the table. Her father’s voice behind Elise in the doorway. Elise stood between them.

You’re upsetting her, Rachel.

The image vanished before she could grasp more.

“Elise?”

She realized Reid had spoken her name. “Sorry.”

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

She flinched. “It’s the way he wrote about us.” She touched the page. “As if we were part of an experiment.”

She continued reading. “October 9. Rachel has begun packing despite my objections. October 10. E. asked about the garden again. I redirected the conversation. October 11. The situation is becoming increasingly difficult to control.” Elise stopped. “There’s really nothing leading up to October 12 to indicate why he wanted me to read that passage first? Other than that, my mother decided to leave him.”

It didn’t make sense. Was her father playing more head games with her? Elise turned the page again. October 13 was missing. The paper had been sliced close to the binding as if removed with a knife or something. So had October 14. She ran her fingertip along the narrow remnants. “These pages were cut out.”

Reid moved around the desk and bent closer.

He examined the binding without touching it. “The edges are discolored. They’ve probably been gone a long time.”

Reid straightened. “October 14th is when your mother called the sheriff’s department.”

She stared at him. “Wait—what?”

“I found an old incident report after I left here.”

Her breath caught. “What did it say?”

“Your mother reported a domestic disturbance at Coldwater Hollow. The responding deputy wrote that she intended to leave.”

Shockwaves rolled through her. “My mother called the police?” So Rachel hadn’t left Coldwater Hollow on the twelfth.

“Yes.”

“She never told me.” Elise couldn’t believe it.

“The report said there were no visible injuries and no charges were filed.”

She glanced down at the missing pages. “What else did it say?” she asked, not sure she wanted to know.

Reid’s hesitation confirmed it had to be bad.

“Tell me.”

“The deputy noted that you appeared frightened.”

Her throat went dry. “What was I afraid of?”

“The report didn’t say.”

Before Elise could respond, a thunderous noise outside sent her shooting from her chair.

Reid was already moving before she understood what had happened. “Stay here.” He crossed the foyer and yanked open the front door. A cold wind swept into the house.

Elise followed despite his order. A vehicle was blasting down the drive away from the house.

Reid ran down the porch steps with a flashlight in his hand.

Elise stood beneath the porch roof as the taillights of the vehicle vanished around the bend.

Reid’s flashlight focused on the mailbox near the edge of the road outside of the gate. It leaned at an angle, its wooden post broken near the ground.

Reid crossed toward it. Elise hurried after him, pulling her sweater tighter around herself.

“Do you think the truck hit it? Is that what we heard?”

He crouched beside the splintered post. “No. The tire tracks never left the gravel.” He examined the break. “This was struck from the passenger side as the vehicle passed.”

“There was more than one person involved.” The thought was chilling. “What did they use?”

“Something heavy. A bat, maybe.”

The mailbox door hung open. Elise spotted a strip of blue fabric that had been tied around the metal handle. Her breath caught.

“What is it?” Reid looked over his shoulder at her.

She reached into her pocket and removed the brass key. The ribbon attached to it fluttered in the wind. Both pieces were from the same faded blue.

Reid looked from the key to the mailbox. “Where did you get that?”

“I found the key inside my father’s desk. The blue material was tied to it.”

He pulled a pair of gloves from his jacket pocket and carefully removed the ribbon from the mailbox. “This wasn’t random.”

Rain peppered Elise’s face. Someone had driven past the house and destroyed the mailbox moments after she opened her father’s box. Someone who knew about the blue ribbon.

Reid placed the strip of fabric into an evidence bag before facing her. “You aren’t staying here alone.”

Elise’s attention shifted back to Coldwater Hollow. The house stood behind them more of a monster than a place that felt like home. Leaving felt like surrender. Staying seemed reckless. “Whoever did this wants to scare me away.”

“Maybe.”

“It’s working, but if I leave, they’ll have the house to themselves.”

Reid’s expression hardened as he looked toward the dark woods. “They may already know another way inside.”

The truth of that silenced her. The hidden passage.

“I keep an overnight bag in my truck.” He crooked a thumb toward the vehicle and Elise realized he wasn’t in his patrol vehicle. “Today is my day off. I can stay here with you just to be safe.”

Relief hit hard. “That would be nice.” Her father had warned her that someone would come looking for what he’d hidden. Now they had. But whatever they were looking for wasn’t hidden in her father’s journal or the box. It had to be something far darker and possibly incriminating. Something Elise hadn’t come across yet.

If that were the case, then they wouldn’t stop until they found it and it wouldn’t matter who they had to take out in the process.

Chapter Seven

Night Watch

Reid studied the fresh damage one final time. The wood had been struck hard enough to snap near the base, yet the truck’s tires had never left the gravel drive. Whoever had done it had leaned from the passenger window and swung something hard as the vehicle passed.

But what disturbed him the most was that they’d been there before to leave the blue fabric. Had probably snuck onto the property while he and Elise were reading her father’s journal and left the ribbon. Damaging the mailbox was a deliberate attempt to get her attention. A warning. For now.

Freezing rain slid beneath the collar of his jacket.

Elise was a few feet away, her sweater getting soaked more by the minute while the wind pushed loose strands of hair across her face. She seemed unaware of both. Her attention remained fixed on the road where the taillights had disappeared.

Reid pulled out his cell phone and contacted Sheriff Lawson. He kept the explanation brief. Suspicious vehicle. Deliberate property damage. Possible intimidation. Evidence tied to items found inside the house. “I’m staying here tonight.”

“I think that’s smart,” the sheriff told him. “I’ll have Mason swing past the property every couple of hours.”

“Thanks. I’ll let you know if anything else happens.” Reid ended the call and returned the phone to his pocket.

“I’m not your responsibility,” Elise told him once he’d finished.

“At the moment, you’re a potential target in an active investigation.”

“That sounds very official.”

“It was meant to.”

Her mouth curved slightly despite the worry in her eyes. The faint smile disappeared as another gust swept rain across the drive.

Reid nodded toward the house. “Let’s get inside before we both freeze.”

He retrieved his overnight emergency bag from the back of the truck. Years of working rural calls had taught him to keep extra clothing, food, blankets, and basic supplies within reach. Storms closed roads without warning along the Oregon coast, and help was rarely as close as people assumed.

Elise walked next to him to the porch. The floorboards groaned beneath their weight. Reid paused before entering and swept the flashlight across the yard one last time. Nothing moved near the tree line. That didn’t mean no one was watching.

Inside, he locked the deadbolt and tested it twice.

Elise watched him. “You already checked the rest of the house.”

“I’m checking again.”

“You think someone came back inside while we were at the mailbox?” The thought clearly terrified her.

“No.”

“But?” Her eyes never left him.

“I don’t make assumptions when someone has just threatened a possible witness.”

The word appeared to strike like a blow. “Witness?”

“Whoever is behind this is trying to scare you off. Either they want to keep you from finding something or they’re afraid of what you might remember.”

She glanced around the space. “My father put me in the middle of whatever is happening here the moment he left me this place.”

Reid couldn’t argue with that. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.” He started in the foyer and worked his way through the first floor, checking every possible point of entry.

The kitchen window remained locked. The rear door had an old deadbolt that barely caught in the frame. Reid wedged a dining chair beneath the knob and tested it.

Elise leaned against the counter. “You’ve done this before.”

“Secured an old house?”

“Stayed overnight because someone may be watching it.”

“A few times,” he admitted.

“And did those nights end well?”

“Most of them.”

“That isn’t reassuring.”

“It wasn’t intended to be.”

She huffed out something close to a laugh that lit her face. For the first time since he met her, some of the strain eased from around her green eyes.

Reid moved toward the basement door. The lock was intact. He opened it and shone his flashlight down the narrow stairs before he descended the steps and cleared the basement. There was no way out through here and no windows. He headed back upstairs and slid the rusted bolt into place.

“I want to check the hidden passage again.”

Elise followed him into the study. The bookcase remained closed. Reid removed the chair and then pressed the concealed latch and pulled it open. The servant’s passage stretched in darkness.

He moved inside, checking the walls, floor, and shelves. Reid confirmed the outside entrance was still locked before making his way back through.

Elise leaned against the desk. “You really don’t miss much.”

“My sisters would disagree.”

“You have sisters?” she asked with a hint of surprise.

“Two.” He crooked a smile her way.

“Older or younger?”

“Older.”

“That explains the vigilance.”

His brows shot up. “How?”

“Two older sisters probably made sure you never got away with anything.”

Reid grinned. “They also taught me to recognize danger early.”

“Danger?”

“They dressed me as a princess for half my childhood.”

A laugh escaped, startling both of them.

Reid found himself chuckling too. “There are pictures,” he added.

She laughed. “I’m sure there are.”

“You will never see them.”

“We’ll see.” The lightness lasted only a moment, but it mattered. The house felt less oppressive when Elise laughed.

Reid gathered the items from the study and carried them to the dining room table. The journal. Thomas Warren’s letter. The altered photograph. The child’s drawing. The locket.

The hidden passage made him uncomfortable, and he preferred keeping Elise and the evidence in a room with clearer sight lines.

She joined him in the dining room a few minutes later carrying two mugs.

Reid accepted one. “Thank you.”

They sat across from each other beneath an old brass chandelier. Only three bulbs worked, filling the room with uneven pools of light.

Reid examined the evidence without touching it. The ribbon inside the evidence bag matched the strip tied to the key. Same color. Similar weave. Possibly cut from the same fabric. The photograph showed a family of three, but someone had been removed beside Elise. The drawing showed two girls, one labeled E, the other deliberately scratched out. Enough to suggest a possible other child. Not enough to prove one had actually existed.

Elise wrapped both hands around her mug. “What are you thinking?”

“That someone wants you focused on Ivy.”

Her gaze sharpened on him. “You still don’t believe she was real.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

Reid leaned back. “I believe you remember her.”

“That isn’t the same thing,” she insisted.

“No, it isn’t.” The answer seemed to wound her. He regretted the bluntness, but lying would have been worse. “Elise, memory is complicated.”

“You don’t have to explain that to me.”

He realized his blunder. “I know what you do for a living.”

“Then you know how condescending that sounds.”

He nodded once. “My apologies.”

Some of the tension left her shoulders.

Reid looked at the photograph again. “Besides, I’m not saying Ivy didn’t exist. I’m saying we don’t know who she was yet.”

“That’s what my father wanted. He wanted me to question everything.”

“Maybe he wanted you to prove she existed.”

She stared at the letter. “Don’t trust your memories. Trust what you can prove.” She shook her head. “My father set up this riddle for me to solve. I’m wondering if he’s still playing mind games with me even from the grave?”

Reid took a drink of coffee. It was strong and slightly bitter. Exactly how he liked it. “What made you become a grief counselor?”

Elise glanced at him, as if surprised by the change in subject.

“You don’t have to answer.”

“No. It’s all right.” She traced one finger around the rim of her mug. “I spent most of my childhood watching my mother carry something she refused to name.”

“Grief?”

“I think so. Fear too.” Elise looked toward the dark kitchen doorway. “After we left here, she kept moving us. Different towns. Different schools. Every time I started feeling settled, we packed again.”

“Was she running from your father?”

“She said she was starting over.”

“That doesn’t really explain things, does it?”

“No.” A sad smile touched her face. “She was very good at not answering.”

Reid waited. His father had taught him silence was often more useful than another question. Eventually, Elise continued.

“People think grief is only about death. It isn’t. You can grieve a home. A childhood. A version of your life that never happened. A version of your life that can never happen again.” Her gaze shifted to the drawing. “Sometimes people grieve memories they aren’t even sure they can trust.”

Reid felt the weight beneath her words. “So you became a counselor to help your mother?”

“At first, maybe.” She shook her head. “By then, she didn’t want help. She wanted distance from her memories.”

“What about you?”

“I wanted answers.”

“And did you find them?”

“No.” Her voice was steady. “I learned how to help other people find theirs.”

The honesty of the admission stayed with him. Reid looked down at his coffee.

“What about you?” she asked. “Did you always want to be a deputy?”

“Pretty much.”

“Because of your father?”

He nodded. “He wore the badge for thirty-two years.”

“Close relationship?”

“Very.”

“How long’s it been?” Something in his tone must have told her his father was gone.

“He died six years ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.” He nodded.

“Was it sudden?”

“A heart attack.” Reid had said the words often enough that they no longer caught in his throat. The emptiness still remained. “He was fishing alone near Black Creek. A hiker found him.”

Compassion flashed on Elise’s face. “That must have been devastating.”

“It was.”

“Did grief change the way you remembered him?”

The question surprised Reid. He considered it before answering. “For a while, all I remembered was the day he died. The phone call. Finding his truck near the creek. Everything before that got crowded out.”

“What changed?” she asked, genuinely curious.

“My mother gave me his tackle box. There was nothing special inside. Rusted hooks. Old fishing line. A pocketknife he carried longer than I can remember.” Reid smiled.

“And that brought him back.”

“Not him. But the rest of him.”

Her eyes met his. “That’s why I do what I do,” she said.

Understanding moved quietly between them. Not an attraction exactly. Something steadier. Recognition. Two people shaped by grief in different ways.

Reid glanced toward the kitchen. An old Bible rested on a shelf beside a stack of cookbooks. Its black cover had cracked along the spine.

“Was that your father’s?” he asked.

Elise followed his gaze. “My mother’s.”

She rose and retrieved it. Dust coated the cover, but the pages opened easily, as though the book had once been used often. Several verses were underlined in blue ink.

Elise stopped at one. Her lips moved silently as she read.

Reid recognized it. “‘And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,’” he said aloud.

“John eight, verse thirty-two.”

“My father’s favorite verse.”

Elise looked down at the page. “I used to believe the truth always healed.”

“You don’t anymore?” he asked, a little saddened by her revelation.

“I think sometimes it breaks things instead.”

Reid considered the damaged photograph, the erased drawing, and the journal full of missing pages. “Maybe breaking isn’t always the end.”

Her gaze lifted. “You really believe that?”

“I believe God can rebuild what people damage.”

The words came without effort. Reid didn’t preach often. Faith had always been quieter for him, something lived more than spoken.

Elise closed the Bible. “I’m not sure what I believe right now.”

“You don’t have to decide tonight.”

Her expression held gratitude, though she said nothing.

“Have you spoken to your mother since you arrived?” he asked, changing the subject.

“I’ve tried. She’s traveling abroad, so I hope she’s getting my messages. I’d really like to speak to her.”

Reid nodded and examined the locket. The chain was tarnished almost black in places, but the clasp and hinge showed brighter metal. He picked it up with gloved fingers. “This has been opened recently.”

Elise leaned closer. “How can you tell?”

“The tarnish is worn away where someone’s thumb would press.” He opened the locket. No photograph rested inside. A tiny piece of paper had been folded into one side.

Elise drew in a breath.

Reid carefully removed it and unfolded the note. Five words had been written in faded ink. “She remembers more than she knows.” He looked at Elise. “Is that your father’s handwriting?”

Elise examined it carefully. “I don’t think so.”

“Your mother’s?”

“I’m not sure.”

He placed the note beside the locket.

“We should keep going,” Elise said.

Reid shook his head. “No more tonight.”

She frowned. “We just found another clue.”

“And we’ll still have it in the morning.”

“You sound like my father,” she said in a defiant tone.

“I hope not.”

That stopped her.

“You’re exhausted,” he said quietly. “So am I. Tired people see what they expect to see.”

“And what do you expect to see?”

“A pattern.”

“What type of pattern?” she asked.

“I don’t know yet.”

She blew out a breath. “That’s comforting.”

“It wasn’t intended to be.”

She shook her head, but the corner of her mouth lifted before she stifled a yawn.

Reid stood. “You should get some sleep.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll be down here.”

She stared at him. “You can’t sit awake all night.”

“I’ve done it before.” He’d lost count of the number of stakeouts he’d been on.

“That doesn’t mean it’s wise.”

“No. It means I know how.”

Elise picked up the drawing. “I’m going to study this until I fall asleep.” She hesitated near the staircase. “For the record, I’m glad you came back.”

Reid met her gaze. “So am I.”

She climbed the stairs slowly. At the landing, she looked back once before disappearing down the hallway.

Reid dragged an armchair into the foyer where he could see the front door, the study entrance, and the staircase. He turned off the dining room light. Only the lamp in the study remained on.

The house settled around him. Rain lightened up around two. The wind moved through the trees with a steady whisper. Reid remained awake, listening.

At 2:43 a.m., a faint scrape came from the study. He stood without making a sound, his hand settling on his weapon. Another scrape followed. It sounded like wood against wood.

The hidden passage.

Reid crossed the foyer and entered the study. The chair Elise had placed in front of the bookshelf was moved and it stood open several inches. Drawing his weapon, he cleared the room, then pulled the shelf open wider and aimed his flashlight into the passage. Empty. He stepped inside. Near the far wall, just beyond the shelves, a single set of muddy footprints. And they were fresh.

Chapter Eight

Footprints in the Dark

For a long moment, Reid simply stood inside the narrow servant’s passage, the beam of his flashlight fixed on the damp impressions pressed into the older prints from earlier.

These were fresh enough that water still glistened in the deep grooves of the tread.

The intruder had returned.

Reid crouched slowly, careful not to disturb the evidence. His flashlight rested against one shoulder as he studied the nearest print. His guess was that they were left by a heavy work boot. Size eleven, maybe twelve.

It matched the same aggressive lug pattern as the previous prints.

He slipped a small tape measure from his pocket and measured the stride between the first two impressions. Thirty-three inches. Longer than average. The person had been moving with purpose, not wandering through the passage.

His gaze followed the trail. Whoever had entered had stepped carefully inside the older footprints whenever possible, masking the exact number of trips through the corridor.

Not an amateur. Someone accustomed to thinking ahead. Someone who understood evidence.

A faint uneasiness settled between Reid’s shoulders. This wasn’t a teenager trespassing in an abandoned house. This was someone who knew exactly where to walk and exactly what they didn’t want found.

He rose and continued deeper into the passage wondering if the person was still in the passage. They could either lock Reid in or worse—shoot him. The thought kept him on edge.

The corridor was barely wide enough for his shoulders. Rough stone walls formed part of the original foundation while unfinished wood beams supported the ceiling overhead. Thick cobwebs stretched across forgotten shelves built into the wall decades earlier.

Except for the intruder and Reid earlier, this passage hadn’t been used in a while.

He continued following the footprints. Instead of heading outside, they moved up the staircase leading to the walk-in linen closet upstairs where the passage ended.

Right away, his fear for Elise skyrocketed. Reid paused beside the doorway and listened. No sound beyond the light rain striking the roof overhead.

He eased the door wider. The upstairs hallway stretched before him, illuminated by a small hallway light.

On the floor, the muddy footprints headed toward Elise’s room.

He forced himself to slow everything down. Years of police work had taught him that panic clouded judgment.

The prints didn’t move past her room. Whoever had stood there hadn’t continued down the hallway to search other rooms. They’d simply stopped outside Elise’s bedroom.

He looked toward her partially open door. If the intruder had wanted to hurt her, they'd have had every opportunity.

Unless... Reid’s thoughts shifted. Maybe hurting Elise had never been the goal.

He tapped lightly against the frame. No response. He waited several seconds before tapping again. Still nothing.

Slowly, he pushed the door open another few inches. Moonlight filtered through rain-speckled glass, casting pale silver across the room. Elise slept curled beneath the quilt. One hand rested beneath her cheek.

Reid studied her for a quiet moment. The strain he’d seen etched across her face since arriving in Coldwater had eased.

She looked younger somehow. Less guarded. Not the accomplished grief counselor who had returned to settle her father’s estate. Just a woman exhausted by too many questions and too few answers.

His attention drifted around the room. The porcelain horse rested safely on the dresser. Books remained stacked beside the bed. Nothing appeared disturbed. No open windows or signs that anyone had entered.

Only those muddy footprints outside the doorway.

Relief settled over him, though it brought little comfort. The intruder had been here. Close enough to hear her breathing. Yet they hadn’t crossed the threshold.

Reid examined the muddy footprints closer and realized the person who had made them had stepped back into the passage using the same steps. He followed the footprints again. They led to the outside exit. There were signs of forced entry. The intruder had broken in.

Reid opened the door and flashed the light into the woods. Darkness swallowed the beam after only a few yards. If the intruder remained nearby, they’d disappear long before he could reach them. He wasn’t willing to leave Elise alone to find out. He’d have to find something to board up the door from the inside to prevent the intruder from coming back. He locked the door again and then traced his steps back.

In the kitchen he found a hammer in a drawer and then grabbed one of the spare chairs and carried them back through the passage to the outside entrance. He broke the chair apart and did his best to secure the door from inside before returning to the study.

On a hunch, he examined the bookshelf hinges more closely. The old brass was well maintained. Someone had lubricated them recently.

He rubbed one finger across the hinge. A faint smear of fresh oil coated the tip of his glove.

Thomas Warren hadn’t been dead a week yet, but he’d been sick for a long time before. It was doubtful he was taking care of the place. Reid slowly closed the bookshelf until the concealed latch clicked into place. He looked around the study. The desk lamp still burned. Books lined the shelves with military precision.

Nothing appeared disturbed. Yet Reid couldn’t shake the feeling someone had been standing exactly where he now stood, watching and waiting long before Elise ever returned to Coldwater Hollow.

And somehow, they seemed to know what she would do next.

Reid returned to the dining room and found everything exactly as he and Elise had left it.

The journal rested near the center of the table. Beside it lay Thomas Warren’s letter, the altered photograph, the tarnished locket and the note found inside it.

Nothing had been moved. That bothered him more than if the room had been ransacked.

Someone had entered Coldwater Hollow without him hearing it. They’d forced the back entrance open. Crossed through a hidden passage and stood outside Elise’s bedroom while she slept. Yet they had ignored the very items he and Elise had been going over.

Reid removed his gloves and poured the last of the coffee into his mug. It had gone cold, but he drank it anyway.

Rain tapped against the windows with a steady rhythm. The ordinary sound only sharpened the unease crawling beneath his skin. He thought about the evidence they’d found so far. The child’s drawing with one name scratched away. A blue ribbon tied to the key and the matching strip left on the broken mailbox. The photograph with someone cut from Elise’s side. Then there were the missing journal pages.

Her father had placed every clue where Elise would find it.

That mattered.

The thought led him back to Thomas’s letter.

Reid unfolded it beneath the light.

Do not tell anyone what you find until you understand why it matters. Especially about Ivy.

So far, nothing in the journal pointed to what Elise’s father meant. Were they missing something?

The wording made less sense each time he read it. If Thomas wanted to protect his daughter, why warn her in riddles? Why summon her back to a house filled with hidden passages and half-buried memories? Why not simply give the evidence to the authorities?

Unless he didn’t trust them…or he didn’t know who to trust.

Reid leaned back, thinking about the old incident report.

Rachel Warren had called the sheriff’s office twenty-four years earlier. She had been preparing to leave. Elise had appeared frightened.

Then the family disappeared from Coldwater. There’d been no follow-up. No one asked why a prominent psychiatrist’s wife fled in the middle of the night with their ten-year-old daughter.

His father used to say small towns weren’t better at keeping secrets than cities. They were only better at deciding which secrets deserved protecting.

Reid looked toward the darkness outside. The town of Coldwater had always treated Thomas with a peculiar kind of respect. Even Martha had recognized his name instantly. Famous psychiatrist. Important research. Brilliant mind. Respect could become a shield. Especially when people preferred reputation over truth.

The locket caught his attention. He picked it up carefully and turned it beneath the light. The chain had darkened with age, but the clasp remained polished from repeated handling.

He opened it again. The interior compartments appeared empty—the note they’d removed from it earlier remained on the table.

Still, the locket felt heavier than it should. Reid pressed his thumb along the edge. Nothing moved. He turned it over. A faint engraving curved across the back, nearly hidden beneath tarnish. He carried the locket into the kitchen and held it beneath the brighter overhead light.

Three words emerged.

Remember who you are.

Tension coiled down deep into his midsection. Not, remember who Ivy is. Not, remember what happened.

Remember who you are.

He returned to the table and set the locket down. He had to stay grounded. Evidence first. Assumptions later.

His father’s voice surfaced from memory.

Listen longer than people expect. They’ll eventually tell you the truth.

Reid had been sixteen when his father first said it. At the time, they were sitting in a fishing boat on Black Creek while Reid complained that one of his sisters had lied about borrowing his truck.

His father had smiled, cast his line, and said nothing more. Three hours later, Reid’s sister admitted everything without being asked again. Silence had done what pressure couldn’t.

Coldwater Hollow was no different. The house had been silent for twenty-four years. That didn’t mean it had nothing to say.

Reid rose and moved toward the old Bible on the kitchen shelf.

He wasn’t sure what drew him to it. Perhaps the verse Elise had found. Perhaps the fact that Rachel’s Bible was one of the few objects in the house that seemed connected to faith instead of Thomas’s research.

He opened it near the bookmarked page. A brittle church bulletin slipped free and fluttered to the floor. Reid bent to retrieve it.

The date at the top stopped him cold.

October 13.

The day after Thomas’s final journal entry. The day before Rachel called the sheriff.

He brought the bulletin to the table. Coldwater Community Church. Sunday morning service. A handwritten note crossed the back in blue ink.

Reid angled it toward the lamp. The writing had faded, but he could make out most of the words.

Meet me by the garden after dark. Bring Ivy.

He read it again. Bring Ivy. That suggested Ivy had been real. Unless the note had been written for Elise. Reid checked the handwriting against the note from the locket. Similar. Same slant and narrow spacing between words.

Rachel, perhaps. Maybe she’d written it to show someone and tucked it back into her Bible. It didn’t really make sense.

He resisted the urge to wake Elise. She had endured enough for one night. Whatever the bulletin meant, it would still be there in the morning.

He slipped it into an evidence sleeve, then returned to the foyer.

The house had gone completely still. No rain against the windows now. The wind had settled as well. Only the grandfather clock to mark off each second.

Reid checked his watch. 4:17 a.m.

He walked back to the study and opened the hidden passage one final time. The fresh footprints remained, slowly drying. He swept his flashlight along the floor, slower this time as he headed upstairs. Near the hinge of the upstairs exit, something pale clung to a rusted nail. Reid moved closer. A single blue thread. He removed it with tweezers and sealed it inside a small evidence envelope. Same color as the ribbon and the sleeve in the photograph. Same color as the dress Elise remembered.

A single coincidence was possible, but multiple formed a pattern.

He straightened and aimed the flashlight toward the upstairs hallway. Someone had entered the house carrying blue fabric for a purpose. They’d known about the passage and had stood outside Elise’s door and left without touching the evidence. Was it possible they were dealing with more than one person?

Reid retraced his steps back to the study and closed the hidden door before dragging a heavy cabinet in front of it.

Then he returned to the armchair again.

At the top of the staircase, a floorboard creaked. Reid looked up. Elise stood on the landing, one hand resting on the banister. Her hair fell loose around her shoulders, and worry shadowed her face. “What happened?”

He rose. For a moment, he considered shielding her from the truth until morning. Then he remembered Thomas’s warning.

Don’t trust your memories. Trust what you can prove.

“Someone came through the passage.”

Elise’s face was drained of color.

He continued before she could speak. “They didn’t take anything.”

Her gaze shifted toward the study. “Then what did they want?”

Reid looked at her. That was the question he hadn’t been able to answer.

Chapter Nine

What She Remembered

“I’m not sure,” Reid told her. “They went upstairs. And they stopped outside your bedroom.”

For several seconds, Elise could not move. Her hand tightened around the banister while the words settled into the silence between them.

Someone had stood outside her bedroom while she slept.

She turned. The hallway stretched before her. The light cast a weak glow across the floorboards. There wasn’t anyone there, yet the hallway was occupied by the memory of someone standing there watching.

“Did they go inside my room?” The thought of someone watching her sleep was sickening.

Reid did not answer right away. “I don’t think so. I secured the back entrance as best I could. I had to break-up one of your kitchen chairs to do it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she told him and descended the stairs while resisting the sudden urge to either run into his arms or return to her room and lock the door. Locks had offered little protection so far. Whoever had entered the house knew about the servant’s passage and how to bypass the secured doors and windows.

They’d moved through Coldwater Hollow’s hidden passage while she slept and Reid was downstairs. Just when she’d begun to feel safe, that little bit of hope was shattered.

Elise reached the bottom of the staircase. “If they didn’t take anything, then what were they up to? Nothing about this makes sense.”

“It gets worse. The passage door has been oiled recently. They didn’t want us to hear them moving through the house.” Reid told her about the bulletin and then held up the small evidence envelope. A single pale-blue thread lay inside. “This was caught on one of the hinges near the upstairs exit.”

Elise stared at it. It matched the ribbon tied to the key and the fabric tied to the broken mailbox. It was the same color as the sleeve in the damaged photograph.

And the same color as the dress she kept seeing in her memories.

Shockwaves crashed through her body. “Show me.”

Reid’s brow furrowed. “Elise—”

“I need to see it.” She pulled the sleeves of her robe lower over her hands. “My father told me not to trust my memories. Fine. I won’t. But I can trust the footprints.”

Reid studied her for a moment, then nodded. “Let’s go.” He led her into the study.

The heavy cabinet he had dragged in front of the bookshelf stood in place. He moved it and released the hidden latch. The bookshelf opened. Reid entered first. As soon as Elise stepped inside, the air smelled musty. Reid’s flashlight showed shelves filled with forgotten jars and rusted tools.

Reid stopped near the first clear print.

“Does it match the others?”

He confirmed with a nod. “The same tread pattern.”

“So whoever came here before returned.”

“Yes.”

They followed the trail deeper into the passage. The thought of someone moving through this hidden corridor while she slept made the walls seem to draw inward. She imagined the intruder advancing through the darkness, careful and deliberate, knowing exactly where the passage led.

Knowing where to find her.

“Your father had advanced cancer. According to the attorney, he’d been sick for a while. Maintaining hidden doors doesn’t fit with the condition of the rest of the house. I don’t think he did that.”

“Who else knew about it?” she wondered.

“That’s one of the questions we need answered.”

They climbed the steps avoiding the footprints. The concealed door opened into a walk-in linen closet off the hallway. Mud smeared the edge of the floor where the intruder had stepped out. He showed her where he’d found the blue thread before they left the closet.

Reid’s light followed the imprints to her door.

She looked inside her room as a chill worked its way through her. “Why didn’t they come in?”

“That’s what worries me.”

She turned to Reid. “You said you didn’t think they came to hurt me.”

“I don’t.” There was hesitation in his tone.

“You sound less certain now.”

“I’m certain they had the opportunity.” His gaze moved toward the footprint. “They didn’t take it.”

“That isn’t comforting.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

Elise folded her arms over herself. “Then why just stand here?”

Reid was silent for a moment. “Maybe they wanted to make certain you were still here.”

Her heartbeat skipped. “Why?”

“Because someone wants you to keep looking.”

The idea frightened her more than a direct threat. She had assumed the damaged mailbox was meant to drive her away. But what if it had been designed to frighten her deeper into the mystery? What if every discovery had been arranged to keep her asking questions?

Nothing had been destroyed completely. Only altered enough to pull her forward.

“They’re guiding me,” she said.

Reid met her gaze. “That’s possible.”

“Toward what?”

“That’s what we need to figure out.” The answer echoed through the hallway.

Elise entered her bedroom and picked up the child’s drawing. The two girls stood beneath the yellow sun, one labeled E, the other name scratched beyond recognition.

For the first time, she wondered whether the damage had been meant to conceal the name. Or draw attention to it.

She turned back toward Reid. “I’m not going back to sleep.”

“I didn’t expect you would. How about some breakfast?”

After everything that had happened during the night, the suggestion felt surprisingly normal.

She found herself smiling. “That sounds good.”

Neither spoke as they made their way into the kitchen. Dawn remained several hours away, but the darkness beyond the rain-streaked windows had softened to charcoal gray. The storm had settled into a gentle drizzle, the steady rhythm almost comforting after the silence inside the house.

Reid opened the refrigerator. “Bacon and eggs okay?”

Her stomach answered before she could. The unexpected growl made her laugh.

Reid looked over his shoulder with a grin. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

She rubbed the back of her neck, suddenly embarrassed. “I honestly can’t remember the last time I ate.”

“You’ve had other things on your mind.”

“That might be the understatement of the year.”

He reached for a skillet. “I’ve got breakfast.”

He nodded toward the coffee maker. “How about you make us some fresh coffee?”

“I can do that.”

Elise welcomed the familiar routine. She dumped the old coffee filter before replacing it with a new one. She measured the coffee grounds, filled the reservoir, and pressed the start button. The simple act steadied her in a way she hadn’t expected. Normal. It felt good to do something normal.

Soon the rich aroma of fresh coffee mingled with the sound of bacon sizzling in the skillet that Reid was standing over. He lowered the fire and went to the fridge. Reid brought out a carton of eggs and found a bowl to crack them in.

“You’re good at that.” She pointed to the skillet when his brows rose.

“Comes from living alone. What about you?” Reid asked.

She took the bowl from him and started on the eggs. “Enough to keep myself alive.”

“That doesn’t exactly answer the question.”

She smiled. “My patients would tell you I’m very good at avoiding direct answers.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“And you?”

“I make a decent breakfast.”

“That sounds suspiciously specific.”

“My mother believed everyone should know how to cook at least five meals before leaving home.”

“And did you?”

“She wouldn’t let me move out until I could.”

Elise laughed softly. “I like your mother already.”

“So do I.” The warmth in his voice caught her attention.

“She still lives in Coldwater?”

“She does. Same little house I grew up in. She keeps threatening to remodel the kitchen.”

“Has she started yet?”

He shook his head. “She says she’s waiting for one of her daughters to volunteer.”

“And they haven’t?”

“Nope. They’re smarter than I am.”

She laughed again, surprised by how easily it came.

For the first time since arriving at Coldwater Hollow, the knot in her chest eased. She glanced toward Reid as he turned the bacon. Without his jacket, his broad shoulders filled the small kitchen. His shirtsleeves were rolled to his forearms, revealing a narrow, white scar running across the inside of his left wrist. She found herself wondering how he’d gotten it.

As though sensing her gaze, he looked up.

She quickly returned her attention to the eggs.

“Something wrong?”

“No.”

“You looked like you were trying to solve a puzzle.”

Heat crept into her cheeks. “I was wondering about the scar.”

He glanced at his wrist and smiled. “This one?”

She nodded.

“My first week at the academy.”

“That doesn’t sound promising.”

“It wasn’t.” He chuckled quietly. “We were practicing defensive tactics. I thought I knew what I was doing.”

“You didn’t?”

“Not even close.”

“What happened?” she asked with her full attention on what he said.

“My training partner introduced my arm to a broken window.”

Elise winced. “Ouch.”

“That’s exactly what I said.”

“You’re making that up.”

“I wish.”

She shook her head but smiled. “For someone who seems so careful, I’m surprised.”

“My father used to remind me that confidence and overconfidence are usually separated by about five seconds.”

“That sounds like good advice.”

“It took stitches before I appreciated it.”

She handed him the eggs. Reid poured them into the skillet where he’d fried the bacon.

It struck Elise how ordinary the moment felt. Just a little while earlier she’d stood in a hidden passage staring at footprints left by someone who had watched her sleep. Now she was having breakfast with a deputy she’d met less than twenty-four hours ago. Life had a strange way of refusing to stay in one emotion for very long.

“You’re smiling,” Reid observed.

“I am?”

He nodded.

She hadn’t realized. “I guess...” She searched for the right words. “I forgot what normal things like this were like.”

Reid set two plates on the table. “Then let’s enjoy it while we’ve got it.”

She looked at him. His words weren’t naïve. Neither of them believed the danger had passed. He simply understood something she’d spent years telling grieving families.

Sometimes you had to accept moments of peace when they were offered. Because they rarely lasted for long.

They ate in comfortable silence for a moment. Despite the peaceful reprieve, her mind kept going over what happened while she slept. “You should have woken me,” she said.

“You needed rest.”

“Reid, someone stood outside my bedroom. I would have preferred to know.”

“And what would you have done?”

The question irritated her because she had no answer. “I don’t know. Something.”

“You were asleep. The intruder was already gone by the time I found the prints. They clearly didn’t mean you any harm.”

“You still should have told me.”

Reid leaned back. “I did tell you.”

“After you investigated half the house alone.”

“That’s my job.”

“And this is my life.” The words came sharper than she intended. Elise regretted her outburst. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

She held up a hand. “I do. I shouldn’t take this out on you.”

“You’re frightened.”

She bristled. “I’m not frightened.”

Reid arched one eyebrow.

She exhaled. “Fine. I’m frightened.”

“That’s not the same as being weak.”

The simple statement disarmed her. She rose and washed out their plates before pouring them both more coffee.

“Thank you,” Reid said.

“For refilling your coffee?” She’d lived alone for a long time. Elise rarely dated. She had only a couple of close friends. Her work was her life. Making small talk wasn’t something she was used to.

“For admitting you’re frightened.”

She sat across from him. “Most people prefer denial.”

“Denial keeps deputies employed.” The faint humor eased some of the tension.

Elise wrapped both hands around her mug. “You were right earlier.”

“About what?”

“The footprints. The blue thread. The intruder.” She looked into the coffee. “I keep worrying, I'm imagining everything.”

“You didn’t imagine this.”

“I know.”

“But?” he prodded when she was quiet.

Elise struggled to explain it. “I spend my days helping people trust their emotions without letting emotion rewrite reality. I tell them memories can be distorted. Grief can change the shape of the past. Trauma can make fragments feel complete.”

“You’re worried that’s happening to you.”

“I know it is.” She swallowed several times. “The little girl near the gate. The blue dress. The laughter in the garden. I can’t tell what’s memory and what’s suggestion anymore.”

Reid did not rush to contradict her. She appreciated that.

“I can remember entire sessions with clients,” she continued. “I remember the first thing they said when they sat down. I remember where they looked when they talked about losing someone. I remember the silence before they admitted they were angry.”

Her fingers tightened around the mug. “But I can’t remember my tenth birthday. I can’t remember what my father sounded like when he laughed. I can’t remember whether Ivy was real.”

Reid’s gaze remained steady. “Then we don’t rely on memory alone.”

“What do we rely on?” she asked.

“The evidence.”

“My father said the same thing.”

“That doesn’t make it wrong.”

Elise stared toward the dark hallway. “What if the evidence has been arranged?”

“Then we figure out who arranged it.”

“And if every answer creates another question?”

“We keep asking.”

The word we settled somewhere deep inside her. “You make it sound simple.”

“It won’t be. But you’re not doing it alone.”

For a moment neither moved. The kitchen seemed warmer despite the draft creeping along the floor. Elise had spent years being the steady person for others. She had listened to grief, fear, anger, and guilt without flinching.

She had never become comfortable needing someone else to be steady for her. Reid didn’t make that need feel like failure.

“Why did you become a deputy?” she asked.

He smiled slightly. “I thought we covered this.”

“You said your father was a deputy.”

“He was.”

“That explains the path. Not the reason.”

Reid considered the question. “My dad believed people deserved somebody willing to show up. He used to say most people don’t call law enforcement on the best day of their lives. They call when something has already gone wrong. Sometimes all you can do is arrive and make sure they don’t face it alone.”

The words touched her more than she expected. “That sounds like counseling.”

“Counseling probably pays better.”

She laughed softly. “I doubt that.”

Reid smiled into his coffee.

For the briefest moment, Coldwater Hollow receded. There was only the warmth of the kitchen, the faint hiss of the coffee maker, and the man sitting across from her.

Then Elise noticed the journal on the dining room table. Reality returned. “We should look at it again.”

Reid followed her gaze. “Maybe after you try to get more sleep. There’s a sofa in the living room. I’ll be close.”

“You haven’t slept at all. I think I can function on what I got.”

“I’m trained to function without sleep.”

“So am I.”

“Grief counseling isn’t tactical training.” He clearly had doubts.

“You’ve never sat between two family members arguing over funeral arrangements.”

“Fair point. Okay. Let’s go over things.”

They carried their coffee into the dining room, where all the evidence remained spread across the table.

Reid moved the locket aside and opened the journal near the entries from October.

Elise sat beside him rather than across. The change felt natural until she became aware of how close his shoulder was to hers.

She shifted her attention to the page. “October 9th. Rachel has begun packing despite my objections. Then October 10th. E asked about the garden again. I redirected the conversation.”

Elise looked up from the journal. “I was questioning whether Ivy was real.”

Reid’s expression tightened. “And your father didn’t want you following that thought.”

“So he redirected me before I could recognize the truth.”

“October 11th,” Reid picked up reading. “The situation is becoming increasingly difficult to control.”

Elise stared at the words. “He was losing control.”

“Sounds like it.”

“He hated that.”

“You remember?” Reid asked curiously.

“Not a specific event. Just the feeling.” She rubbed her arms. “My father always had to know what was happening. Where my mother was. What I was doing. What I was thinking.”

“That isn’t normal.”

“No, it isn’t.”

Reid turned back several pages. “Have you noticed this?”

“What?” She looked over his shoulder.

“He always refers to your mother as Rachel.”

Elise scanned the entries. Rachel remains resistant. Rachel’s emotional responses are interfering with progress. “You’re right. That seems reasonable though.”

“But he calls you E.”

“He abbreviated patient names.” The words left her mouth before she understood their meaning.

Reid looked at her. Elise’s breath caught. The room seemed to tilt.

“He wasn’t writing as my father,” she whispered. “He was writing as a doctor.”

Reid said nothing. He didn’t need to. The evidence lay in front of her. The clinical language. References to treatment. Concern that her mother was interfering. The line about redirecting her questions.

Elise pressed her fingertips against the page. “He was studying me.”

Saying it aloud made it real in a way the journal had not.

Reid’s hand moved toward hers, then stopped short of touching her. “Elise—”

“What kind of father treats his own daughter like a patient without telling her?”

“One who believed his work mattered more than boundaries.”

“Or more than me,” she said, her voice full of regret.

“This says something about him. Not your worth.”

She wanted to believe that.

The first gray light of morning crept through the windows. Elise rose because sitting still had become impossible. She crossed to the glass doors leading toward the garden.

Fog rested low over the grounds. Trees emerged in dark shapes beyond the tangled shrubs. And something moved near the edge of the yard. She tensed.

Reid rose. “Do you see something out there?”

She stepped closer to the glass. A wooden swing hung from the branch of an old oak tree near the garden. The wind pushed it gently back and forth. Only weather moving an object that had been there for years.

Yet the sight opened a crack inside her. Sunlight. Bare feet against grass. A rope cutting into her palms. Another girl laughing.

“Higher,” the girl called.

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.”

Elise closed her eyes. She was pushing the swing. Dark curls streamed behind the girl’s shoulders. The blue dress fluttered in the summer air.

Then the scene shifted. Elise sat on the swing alone.

Her father stood behind her. He’d said something to her about Ivy. Elise closed her eyes. The little girl seemed so real. She gripped the window frame.

Reid was beside her at once. “What happened?”

She stared at the swing. “I remember.”

“The swing?”

She nodded. “And Ivy.” The memory of her felt real. So had the others. But this time, something had been different.

Reid looked toward the garden, then back at her.

Elise pressed one hand against the cool glass.

Somewhere beneath that certainty, another possibility had begun to stir.

One she was not yet ready to face.

Chapter Ten

The Garden

Elise kept one hand against the glass door while the swing moved gently beneath the old oak tree.

“What else did you remember?” he asked, his voice remained quiet. Unobtrusive.

Elise closed her eyes, though part of her feared the memory would vanish the moment she reached for it.

“Summer,” she said. “The garden wasn’t overgrown. There were flowers everywhere.”

“What kind?”

“Roses. And Lilac bushes” The image sharpened. “My mother grew white roses near the fountain. She said they were difficult, but she liked things that needed patience.”

A faint ache moved through Elise.

She had forgotten that.

Not the roses. Her mother’s voice.

The way Rachel had smiled while clipping dead blooms from the stems. The way she tucked loose strands of dark hair behind one ear when she worked.

“What else?” Reid asked.

“The swing.” She opened her eyes. The weathered seat hung several inches above the ground. One rope twisted slightly with each pass. “I was pushing someone.”

“Ivy?”

“I think so.”

Reid’s expression remained unreadable. Not doubtful. Careful.

Elise stepped away from the glass. “You still don’t believe me.”

“I believe you remember pushing someone.”

“That isn’t the same thing.”

“No.”

The answer stung, though she understood why he gave it. He had promised her evidence, not comfort.

Reid looked at the garden. “Memories can return in pieces. You know that better than I do.”

“I also know what suggestions can do, if that’s what you mean.”

“You saw the swing before the memory came.”

“And I’ve spent the past two days thinking about Ivy.”

“Then don’t force an answer.”

“Now you sound like me talking to my patients.”

“Is it good advice?”

“Usually.”

“Then consider taking it.”

Despite herself, she smiled.

Reid opened the door. Cold air swept into the room, carrying the scent of pine trees and salt from the distant ocean.

“You want to take a look?” he asked.

Elise hesitated. Every instinct told her the garden held answers. The more rational part of her warned that it might contain only more carefully arranged clues. “I do.”

She slipped on her coat and followed Reid outside. The night’s rain had darkened the stone terrace. Water dripped from the roofline and gathered in shallow puddles along the edge of the neglected flower beds.

Reid went ahead of her scanning the yard and tree line before stepping onto the path.

Elise noticed the shift in him immediately. Inside the house, he had seemed steady and approachable. Outside, he became the deputy again. His gaze moved constantly. Garden. Woods. Outbuildings. Upper windows. His right hand remained near his sidearm without touching it.

“You think whoever came through the passage is still here?” she asked.

“I think assuming they left would be careless.” His blunt honesty no longer surprised her.

They moved deeper into the garden where the stone path had nearly disappeared beneath moss and weeds. Rosebushes reached across it in thorny tangles, their branches stripped bare for winter. A cracked birdbath leaned near a hedge. Farther ahead, the fountain from the photograph stood beneath a veil of dead vines.

Elise slowed. The garden felt different from the house. Inside Coldwater Hollow, memory came in jagged flashes. A sound. A scent. A doorway that left fear behind after the image disappeared.

Here, the past seemed closer.

She could almost hear her mother humming while she worked in the garden. Almost see a little girl darting between the flower beds. Almost feel sunshine where the November cold touched her face.

Reid glanced back. “You all right?”

“I don’t know.”

He waited while she caught up. They reached the oak tree. The trunk was massive, split near the base and scarred by decades of storms. The swing hung from one of the lowest branches.

Elise reached for the rope. The fibers were rough beneath her palm. A memory rose instantly. Small hands gripping the same rope. Her father’s voice behind her. “Stop talking to her.”

Elise jerked her hand away.

Reid came over. “What happened?”

“Nothing.”

His look said he did not believe her.

She exhaled. “I remembered my father.”

“Okay, what do you remember about him?”

“He told me to stop talking to someone.”

“Ivy?”

“He didn’t use her name.”

Her frustration rose. Every memory offered enough to unsettle her and too little to explain anything.

Reid crouched beside the swing and examined the rope.

“What is it?” Elise asked.

He ran two gloved fingers along the knot near the wooden seat. “This rope isn’t old.”

“How old?”

“A few years, maybe less.” Reid examined the knot again. “Whoever replaced it knew what they were doing.”

“Meaning?” Elise asked.

“It’s the kind of knot someone experienced in maintaining a property would use—secure enough to hold weight without damaging the branch.” He looked toward the neglected garden. “Someone has been maintaining selected parts of this place.”

Her stomach twisted. “Why this?” It didn’t make sense.

Reid looked up at her. “Good question.” He photographed the rope and the knots before checking the branch above. The hardware securing the swing showed little rust compared with the neglected tools and fixtures elsewhere on the property.

Someone had wanted the swing usable. The thought unsettled Elise more than finding it broken would have. She turned to the fountain.

It stood twenty yards away, partially hidden by tangled vines. The stone basin was cracked down one side. Dark stains marked the pedestal where water had once spilled over.

“I remember that too.”

Reid straightened. “The fountain?”

“My father took the picture there.”

“The one in the study?”

She nodded. In the photograph, nine-year-old Elise had been smiling at someone outside the frame. A child-sized shadow stretched across the ground beside her. She walked toward it before Reid could stop her. The closer she came, the stronger the recognition became. Her shoes slipped slightly on the wet path. She caught herself against a stone bench.

And another memory broke through. A girl crouched behind the fountain, holding something against her chest. A small metal box.

“You can’t tell him,” the girl whispered, her voice frantic.

“Tell him what?” Elise had asked.

The girl tightened her arms around the metal box. “That I kept what he told me to bury.”

The image vanished. Elise stopped abruptly.

Reid nearly collided into her. “What did you see?”

She stared at the fountain. “Ivy had a box.”

His attention never left her face. “What kind of box?”

“Tin. Small enough to hold in both hands.”

“Where did she put it?”

Elise shook her head. “I don’t remember.”

Reid moved toward the fountain and examined its base. “Maybe you don’t have to.” He crouched beside the pedestal. Fresh scrape marks cut through the moss along one side of the stone.

“Someone moved it.”

“Recently,” Reid said.

He pressed one hand against the basin and tested its weight. The fountain shifted slightly. Beneath it came the dull scrape of metal against stone. Reid shifted his footing on the slick stone path and pressed harder against the fountain.

For a moment nothing happened. Then the heavy basin groaned.

Stone scraped against stone, the sound echoing through the silent garden.

“It moved,” Elise whispered.

“Only a few inches, but that’s enough.” Reid circled the fountain slowly, studying the scrape marks running along the base. The moss had been disturbed recently, exposing lighter stone beneath.

“This wasn’t weather,” he said.

“No. Somebody’s pushed this more than once.”

Elise looked in the direction of the woods bordering the property. “So they knew something was hidden here.”

“Or they were making sure it stayed hidden.” He braced both hands against the basin again. “Help me.”

Elise slipped beside him.

“On three.”

She nodded.

“One. Two. Three.”

Together they pushed. The fountain shifted another six inches before settling with a heavy thud. Both of them stepped back, breathing hard.

A shallow cavity had been carved into the concrete beneath the pedestal. Inside rested a small, rusted tin box.

Elise stared at it as the memory she’d experienced moments earlier flashed through her mind.

A little girl hugging a metal box.

Her pulse hammered. “I remember...” She stopped herself. No. She remembered fragments. Not facts.

Reid crouched beside the opening. “Don’t touch it yet.” He photographed the box from several angles before slipping on a fresh pair of latex gloves.

Only then did he lift it carefully from its hiding place. The hinges protested with a rusty squeal. The lid refused to budge.

“It’s rusted shut.” He glanced toward Elise. “You want the honors?”

She hesitated. Fear and hope collided inside her, but she nodded.

Reid handed her the box. It felt surprisingly heavy. Years of dampness had roughened the metal beneath her fingertips. She worked the lid back and forth. The seal broke.

She and Reid leaned closer. Inside lay the ordinary treasures of childhood. A handful of brightly colored marbles. Three polished seashells. A tiny carved horse no larger than Elise’s thumb. Several dried flowers pressed between wax paper.

Nothing remarkable. Nothing that explained the twenty-four years of silence.

Elise gently picked up the little horse. Its paint had worn away across the nose. Another memory surfaced. She and another child were racing the tiny horse along the fountain’s edge.

The other girl laughed. “You always cheat.”

“I do not.”

“You started closer.”

“That’s because I’m faster.”

The laughter echoed inside her mind before dissolving. Elise closed her eyes. It felt so real.

“You remembered something.”

Reid’s quiet observation brought her back.

She looked at the horse in her hand. “I’m not sure if I remembered it or wanted it to be real.”

Reid lifted the layer of pressed flowers. Something remained beneath them. A folded photograph. The edges had curled from years inside the damp box.

Reid eased it free with extraordinary care. Water stains spread across much of the image. One entire corner had been destroyed. He held it where both of them could see.

Elise drew in a slow breath. The photograph showed the fountain exactly as it had looked years ago. Roses bloomed around it. Summer sunlight filled the garden.

A little girl stood in front of the fountain. Elise. She recognized herself immediately. Her hair was longer. She wore denim overalls and smiled openly at the camera.

Beside her stood another child. Most of the second figure had been ruined by moisture. Only one shoulder remained visible. Part of a blue dress. One small hand reaching toward Elise.

The face had dissolved beneath years of water damage. Nothing remained except a pale blur.

Elise stared until her vision blurred. “There was someone beside me. I wasn’t imagining that.”

“You weren’t standing alone.” The distinction mattered. He hadn’t confirmed Ivy. Only another child.

Tears filled Elise’s eyes. “I knew it.”

Reid looked from the photograph to the tin box. “We know another child stood beside you.”

She searched his face. “But?”

“We still don’t know who she was.”

The words hurt because they were true. Every clue pointed toward another little girl. None identified her. And none explained why someone had erased her from every photograph and drawing.

Reid glanced back to the fountain. “Someone with a lot of strength would have had to put the tin box under that fountain. A little girl wouldn’t have the strength to move it, hide it there, and then move it back.”

Elise scrubbed her cheeks. He was right. “I keep waiting for this to get easier.” She’d wanted answers, yet all she had right now was more questions.

“I don’t think it ever will.”

She gave a small laugh through her tears. “That’s not encouraging.”

“I promised honesty.”

“Well, you certainly deliver.”

He smiled faintly. “It’s one of my less popular qualities.” Reid slipped the photograph into the evidence sleeve.

The little horse remained in her palm. She couldn’t quite bring herself to let it go.

Reid photographed the remaining contents before carefully returning them to the tin box. “We’ll take everything back inside.”

“You think there’s more?”

“I think somebody hid this for a reason.”

Elise looked once more at the empty cavity beneath the fountain.

A low rumble sounded. Elise and Reid turned. It wasn’t thunder but an engine somewhere beyond the trees.

Reid’s attention shifted toward the long gravel drive leading to the road. A dark pickup sat idling beyond the broken mailbox. Motionless.

Its windshield reflected the gray morning sky, making it impossible to see the driver.

“Stay here,” Reid said. He started toward the truck. The engine roared to life. Gravel sprayed behind the tires as the pickup accelerated away from the house. “Wait!” Reid broke into a run. The truck reached the road before he covered half the distance. Within seconds it disappeared behind the trees.

Reid slowed, his hands clasping his knees.

Elise hurried to catch up. “Did you see the plate?”

He shook his head. “Too much mud.”

She looked down. Something white rested against the remains of the broken mailbox. An envelope. It hadn’t been there earlier. “I’m not touching it.”

Reid photographed it before slipping on fresh gloves. Across the front, written in neat black letters, was a single word.

Elise.

“Oh, no.”

He carefully turned it over. The flap wasn’t sealed.

Reid looked her way. “You ready?”

She wasn’t, and Elise wasn’t sure she ever would be. “I’m fine. Open it.”

He did. Inside was a single sheet of paper with only one sentence typed across the center.

You’re remembering the wrong little girl.

Chapter Eleven

The Wrong Girl

The words weren’t threatening in the traditional sense. There was no demand. No promise of violence or a warning to leave Coldwater Hollow.

That made them worse.

The message had been written to destabilize Elise. Whoever had delivered it understood exactly where to strike.

He held the sheet by the edges and studied it beneath the gray morning light. Standard white printer paper. Common black ink. The message was perfectly centered on the page. Nothing personal except the words themselves.

The envelope had not been sealed. It bore no stamp or postmark because someone had carried it to the property and left it beside the broken mailbox while Reid and Elise searched the garden.

That person had been close enough to watch them.

Reid lifted his gaze toward the road. The dark pickup was long gone, but the fresh tracks remained in the damp gravel. The tires matched the width and general pattern left near the house the day before.

Same vehicle, most likely. Same person? He couldn’t be certain.

Elise stood several feet away, holding the tiny carved horse they had recovered from the tin box. She stared at the anonymous note as though the sentence might rearrange itself into something she could understand.

“What does it mean?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

Her eyes lifted to his. “You must have some idea.”

“I have several. That’s the problem.”

The disappointment on her face was brief but unmistakable.

Reid slipped the paper into an evidence sleeve. “We need to go inside.”

“Why?”

“Because whoever left this may still be watching.”

She glanced toward the trees, visibly shivering.

The abandoned garden suddenly seemed too open. Too quiet. The bare branches gave anyone hidden among them an unobstructed view of the house, the fountain, and the broken mailbox.

Reid gathered the tin box and photographs. “Stay close.”

Elise did not argue. That concerned him almost as much as the note.

They crossed the yard quickly. Reid continued scanning the woods and upper windows as they climbed the porch steps.

He locked the front door behind them and set the evidence on the dining room table.

Elise remained near the entrance. “Do you think they followed us into the garden?”

“I think they knew we were there.”

The envelope had not been beside the mailbox when they went outside. Whoever left it had waited until Reid and Elise were occupied near the fountain.

They had either watched from the road or approached through the woods.

Neither possibility sat well with him.

Reid took out his phone and photographed the new evidence before contacting Sheriff Lawson.

Ben answered almost immediately. “You sound like you haven’t slept.”

“I haven’t,” Reid told him.

“That makes two of us. What happened?”

Reid moved into the study while Elise remained in the dining room. He kept his voice low, though there was little point in hiding the conversation from her.

He summarized the discovery in the garden, the photograph, the pickup, and the anonymous message.

Ben was silent for several seconds. “You get a plate?”

“Obscured with mud.”

The sheriff blew out a breath. “Description?”

“Dark pickup—possibly green. Older model. Likely Ford or Chevrolet. Extended cab.”

“That narrows it down to half the county.”

“I know.” Reid ran a hand across the back of his neck.

“You think the same truck hit the mailbox?”

“Yes.”

“What do you need?”

“Someone to collect the envelope and process it. I also want traffic-camera footage from town and any businesses along the eastern road.”

“There aren’t many.”

“Start with the gas station and the hardware store.”

“You got it,” Ben said. “I’ll send Mason out.”

Reid glanced toward the dining room. Elise had taken a seat at the table. The small horse remained clenched in her hand. “There’s something else,” Reid said. “The message said she’s remembering the wrong little girl.”

Ben did not respond immediately. “Could it be nonsense meant to confuse her?”

“Maybe.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“Whoever is doing this knows about Ivy. They know Elise is recovering memories. They knew about the blue ribbon and the hidden passage. This isn’t random harassment.”

“Then what is it?”

“Someone steering the investigation.”

“Toward what?”

Reid looked at Thomas Warren’s journal. “That’s what I intend to find out.”

Ben sighed. “Don’t let this get personal.”

Too late.

“It’s an active case, Ben.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

“I know,” Reid sighed.

“You’ve known her for two days.”

Long enough to recognize that Elise had spent most of her life carrying burdens no one should have been asked to bear. Long enough to feel something shift every time she trusted him with another piece of herself.

“I’m doing my job,” Reid said. “I’ll call when Mason arrives.” He ended the call before Ben could push further.

When he returned to the dining room, Elise had placed the horse beside the damaged photograph recovered from beneath the fountain.

She looked up. “What did Sheriff Lawson say?”

“He’s sending someone to collect the evidence. Another deputy will check cameras around town to see if we can identify the vehicle.”

She held his gaze. “You don’t sound optimistic.”

“There aren’t many cameras in Coldwater.”

“Another benefit of small-town living?”

He gave her a half-grin. “Privacy has its disadvantages.”

She looked toward the evidence sleeve. “The writer knew what we found.”

“Maybe.”

“They left the note right after we found the photograph.”

“That could be timing rather than knowledge,” he told her.

“Do you believe that?”

Reid pulled out the chair opposite her and sat. “I believe whoever wrote the message expected us to find it today.”

“Which means they knew we would search the garden.”

“Yes.”

“How?” she asked.

He had been asking himself the same question. Either someone had overheard their conversation inside the house, or the clues had been arranged to guide Elise toward the fountain.

The swing had been maintained. The old photograph showed Elise near the fountain. Her memories led her outside to the scrape marks which led them to the hidden box. Every discovery felt spontaneous.

Yet someone seemed to anticipate each step.

“They may not have known exactly when,” he said. “The envelope could have been prepared earlier.”

“But they were waiting nearby.”

He nodded.

Her fingers tightened around the edge of the table. “I don’t understand why someone would want me to remember and then tell me I’m remembering the wrong person.”

“Maybe they don’t want you trusting your memories.”

She rubbed her hand across her eyes. “My father didn’t either.”

Reid studied her. “You think he arranged this?”

“He’s dead.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

She looked toward the journal. “My father planned for me to return. He left the box. The letter. The entry dates. Maybe he gave someone instructions to carry out this sequence of events.”

“To frighten you?”

“To test me.”

Anger flared inside him. “He treated everything like research. Maybe this is one final experiment carried out from the grave.” The possibility was disturbing, but Reid could not dismiss it.

Thomas had spent his career manipulating memory. He had treated his daughter like a subject rather than a child. A man like that might have believed fear would force buried memories to surface.

“Did your father have assistants?” Reid asked. “Colleagues who visited the house. Former patients?”

She flinched at the last word.

Reid regretted it immediately. “Elise, I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.” She pushed her chair back and stood. “I was his patient too. We both know it.”

“We know he wrote about you clinically.”

“He called me E. He documented my episodes. He redirected my memories.” She folded her arms, but the gesture looked less defensive than protective. “Whatever he did, he didn’t do it like my father.”

Reid rose as well. “You didn’t choose that.”

“No.”

“You were a child.”

“I know.” Her tone told him she understood the facts without accepting them emotionally.

He had seen the same conflict in victims before. They could explain their innocence logically while carrying shame as though they had caused what happened.

Reid wanted to reach for her. The impulse surprised him. He hadn’t known Elise all that long. Yet the desire to steady her felt natural. Not because he believed she was fragile. Because she had been forced to stand alone for too long.

Instead, he gave her space.

“What does the message make you think of?” he asked.

She stared at the note. “Another girl.”

“Besides Ivy?”

He saw her doubts. “I don’t know.” Elise crossed to the window. “My memories keep changing. Sometimes I see Ivy. Sometimes I see myself alone. What if there really was another child, but Ivy wasn’t her name?”

“That’s possible.” Anything was possible at this point.

“What if my father made me call her Ivy?”

“Why would he do that?”

“Why did he do any of this?” Her voice broke on the final word.

Reid stopped beside her without saying anything. The garden was visible beyond the glass. The fountain had been shifted from its base. The swing moved gently beneath the oak. Nothing outside appeared threatening now. That illusion had already proved false.

“I’m beginning to wonder if I can trust anything I remember,” Elise said.

Reid considered his answer carefully. “Then don’t trust it alone.”

She turned toward him.

“Memory is one piece,” he continued. “The journal is another. The photographs. The drawing. Records. People who knew you. We build the truth from all of it.”

“What if none of it agrees?”

“Then the contradictions tell us where to look.”

A weary smile touched her lips. “You make everything sound solvable.”

“It usually is.”

“And when it isn’t?”

He thought of cases that had remained open. Families who had never received answers. His father dying alone beside Black Creek before Reid could reach him. “You keep showing up.” Her gaze held his. For one unguarded moment, the distance between them seemed to disappear.

Reid became aware of how close she stood. Of the green in her eyes. Of the faint scent of coffee still clinging to her lips.

Elise looked away first. The subtle movement reminded him of the line he was in danger of crossing. She was involved in an investigation. She was vulnerable. And he was the deputy responsible for keeping her safe.

Reid stepped back. “We need food.” The abrupt change earned him a puzzled look.

“Food?” she said as if he’d said something crazy.

“We haven’t eaten since breakfast.” He was happy that his voice was steady anyway.

“That was only a few hours ago.”

“It feels longer.”

She laughed. “That’s because neither of us slept.”

“Exactly.” He moved into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. A package of sliced turkey, cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, mayonnaise, a carton of milk, butter, and a container of potato salad filled the shelves. A loaf of bread rested on the counter beside several cans of tomato soup.

He looked over his shoulder at her. “We can make turkey or grilled cheese sandwiches.”

She smiled. “How about turkey?”

The small victory warmed him more than it should have.

“Perfect.” Reid heated the soup while Elise prepared the turkey sandwiches. For several minutes, they worked in comfortable silence. The kitchen felt separate from the mystery. The scent of tomato soup reminded him of childhood.

He understood why Elise relied on routines.

“You’ve always wanted to live here?” she asked.

“In Coldwater?”

She nodded.

“Yeah. I left for a bit to attend college and the academy.”

“What did you study in college?” She glanced up from slicing a tomato.

“Criminal justice.”

She laughed. “I should’ve guessed.”

He gave her a wry look. “What did you expect?”

“Something involving fishing maybe.”

He chuckled and shook his head. “That was my backup plan.”

“You can make a career out of fishing?”

“My father thought so.”

Her expression became sympathetic at the mention of him. “You came back because of your family?”

“At first.”

“And later?” She added cheese to both sandwiches before closing them.

Reid stirred the soup. “My father died shortly after I returned. My mother was alone. My sisters both had families elsewhere.”

“So, you stayed for her?”

He considered the question. “She’d say I stayed because I couldn’t survive outside Coldwater.”

“Could you?”

“Probably.”

“That doesn’t sound confident,” she told him.

“I like knowing my neighbors.”

“Even when they know everything about you?” She appeared perplexed.

“They rarely know everything.”

Elise glanced toward the dining room and the evidence spread across the table. “Apparently.”

“What about Portland?” he asked. “Is that home?”

She took longer to answer. “It’s where I live.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

“No.”

He waited.

Finally, she said, “I don’t know that I’ve ever thought of anywhere as home.”

The quiet admission tightened something inside him.

“Not even with your mother?”

“We moved too often. Home was wherever she decided we were safe. Then a few months later, safe became somewhere else.”

“You never put down roots.”

“I tried once.”

Reid looked at her. “A relationship?”

She nodded. “His name was Matthew. We were together for almost three years.”

“What happened?”

“He wanted more than I knew how to give.”

“Meaning?”

“Marriage. A house. Children. Permanence.” She smiled without humor. “All the things people are supposed to want.”

“And you didn’t?”

“I wanted them.” Her voice softened. “I just didn’t trust them.”

Reid understood more than she probably intended him to. A person who had learned that homes could become dangerous would not easily build another.

“His loss,” Reid said.

Elise glanced at him, surprise flickering across her face.

He returned his attention to the stove before she could see too much in his expression.

“Your turn,” she said.

“My turn for what?”

“Relationships.”

He nearly laughed. “That sounds like an interrogation.”

“You started it.”

“I asked about Portland.”

“And somehow ended up hearing about Matthew.”

“Occupational hazard.”

“Deputy or overly curious man?” she asked.

“Both.” Reid gave in. “There was someone. Years ago.”

“Serious?”

“We were engaged.”

Elise’s hand stilled against the counter. “That’s serious. What happened?”

“She wanted to leave Coldwater. I didn’t.”

“Which of you was wrong?”

“Neither.”

“That’s almost worse.”

“It was.” Reid brought the soup to the table while Elise brought the sandwiches.

They had barely sat down when his phone rang. Deputy Mason Summer. Reid answered.

“I’m at the front gate,” the deputy said. “You may want to see this.”

Reid was already standing. “What am I looking for?”

“The gate’s chained shut from the outside.”

Reid’s gaze shifted toward Elise.

“What is it?”

Reid reached for his jacket and sidearm. “Someone doesn’t want us leaving.” Reid headed out the front door with Elise. They reached the gate where Mason waited. The chain around the iron gate was new. Secured with a steel padlock.

Mason stood beside his cruiser on the far side, examining it.

“This wasn’t here when you arrived?” Reid asked Elise.

“No. The gate was open and I don’t remember a lock or a chain anywhere nearby.”

Mason lifted the chain. “No prints on the lock that I can see. Whoever did it wore gloves.”

Reid scanned the road and woods. The dark pickup from earlier was nowhere in sight. “You have bolt cutters?” he asked Mason.

“In the cruiser.”

While Mason retrieved them and broke the lock, Reid looked back toward Coldwater Hollow. From the gate, the Victorian appeared distant and strangely still. Then movement flashed in an upstairs window. The curtain in Elise’s bedroom shifted aside.

Reid went cold. “Elise, stay with Mason.”

“What did you see?”

He was already running. The distance to the house seemed twice as long as before. Gravel slid beneath his boots as he crossed the drive and took the porch steps two at a time.

The front door remained closed. He opened it and moved through the foyer, drawing his weapon as he reached the staircase. No sound came from above. He climbed quickly and stopped outside Elise’s room. The door was open.

Reid stepped inside. No one waited inside to attack. He checked the closet and found it empty. The window was locked. Nothing appeared disturbed until he saw the bed.

The child’s drawing lay unfolded across the quilt. It had been left downstairs on the dining room table.

Across the bottom, beneath the two girls holding hands, someone had written two words in pencil that weren’t there before.

Look closer.

Reid stared at the message. The chain at the gate had never been meant to trap them. It had been a distraction.

And while he and Elise were outside, someone had walked back into the house.

Chapter Twelve

Look Closer

Reid’s voice came through Elise’s phone, clipped and urgent. “Have Mason bring you back to the house.”

The call ended before she could ask what he’d found.

Mason returned the bolt cutters to the cruiser and came back to her. “Did he find something inside?”

“I’m not sure.” But the strain in Reid’s voice said it was more than a loose window or another muddy footprint.

Mason drove them up to the house where Reid waited for them inside the front doorway. His weapon had been holstered, but every line of his body remained alert.

“What happened?” Elise asked.

He stepped aside. “Upstairs.”

She entered, expecting him to explain more. He did not. That frightened her more than if he had.

Mason closed and locked the door behind them.

Reid led the way to the second floor, stopping outside Elise’s bedroom.

“Was someone here again?” she asked.

Reid’s gaze met hers. “Yes.”

Elise entered the room. At first, nothing appeared different. The quilt lay rumpled across the bed. The curtains hung still at the locked window. Her suitcase remained beside the dresser.

Her attention fell on the drawing lying on her bed.

She looked at Reid. “We left it downstairs.”

He nodded without speaking.

Right away, she spotted the words across the bottom.

Look closer.

Elise’s heartbeat stuttered. The message had not been typed like the note left near the mailbox. This was handwritten. The letters were large and deliberate, the pressure heavy enough to dent the paper.

“They’re talking to me,” she said at last. She looked around the room. Someone had entered while she stood at the gate. They had climbed the stairs, walked into her bedroom, and placed the drawing on her bed. Again.

The intruder had been here before while she slept. This time, they had returned while Reid and Mason were only a few hundred yards away with her.

“Did you see anyone?” she asked Reid.

“No. I saw the curtain move from the gate.”

“And by the time you got here?”

“They were gone.”

“The passage?” she asked.

“Without a doubt. Someone broke through the boards I put up on the exterior passage door. The chair was moved away from the entrance in the study as well.”

“I’ll grab my kit and dust for fingerprints,” Mason told them and left the room.

Elise remained near the bed. The drawing seemed different now. Not because of the added words. Because someone wanted her to study it.

She picked it up by the edges.

Reid stood behind her. “Don’t touch the writing.”

“I won’t.” She examined the picture beneath the light from the bedside lamp. Two girls. A yellow sun. The black house behind them with too many windows. One child had dark hair. The other had been colored brown. Elise had assumed the dark-haired girl was her because of the letter E written above it.

She looked more carefully now. Something she had accepted without question suddenly felt wrong. “The second girl isn’t wearing blue.”

Reid glanced at the drawing. “What?”

“In my memories, Ivy always wears a blue dress.” Elise pointed to the child on the right. “But the dress isn’t colored.” Only the outline remained. The blue crayon appeared somewhere else. A ribbon had been drawn in the dark-haired child’s hair.

Elise stared at the child marked with the letter E. “The blue belongs to me.”

Reid focused on the drawing without answering.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” she said quickly. “Children mix up colors. Maybe I ran out of blue crayon. Maybe the dress was supposed to be blue.”

“Maybe.” She heard the caution in his voice.

Elise shifted her attention to the scratched-out name above the second child. The damage was violent. Repeated lines of dark crayon had torn through the paper in places.

She angled the picture toward the light. “Look at this. The name isn’t centered over the other girl.” The scratched section extended farther left than she’d noticed before, nearly touching the E above the dark-haired child.

Reid frowned. “You’re right.”

“What if the erased name wasn’t hers?”

He looked at her. “Whose was it?”

“I don’t know.”

The words look closer seemed to press against her.

Someone wanted her to reconsider everything she believed the drawing proved.

Mason came back. “I’ll start near the window.”

“It’s doubtful you’ll find anything there. They came through the downstairs passage,” Reid told him.

“Then, I’ll start down there.” Mason left them alone.

Elise sat on the edge of the bed, still holding the drawing. Exhaustion settled over her in a heavy wave. She had barely slept. Her father’s secrets had kept unfolding faster than she could absorb them. Each clue seemed to point toward Ivy, only to shift when she reached for it.

Reid crouched to look beneath the bed and inspected the space between the dresser and wall.

When he straightened, she asked, “Do you ever get tired of carrying everyone else’s fear?”

The question surprised him. She saw it in his face.

Reid leaned one shoulder against the dresser. “Sometimes.”

“What do you do with it?”

“Keep moving.”

“That doesn’t make it go away.”

“No.”

Elise looked down at the drawing. “People bring me the worst moments of their lives. They sit in my office and hand me their grief because they don’t know where else to put it.”

“And you carry it for them.”

“For a little while.” And she did.

“What happens when you go home?”

She gave a tired smile. “I reorganize things.”

Reid glanced around the preserved childhood room. “That explains your apartment.”

“How would you know what my apartment looks like?”

“I’m guessing.”

She couldn’t deny it. “You guessed correctly.”

The small exchange eased something inside her. Not enough to erase the fear. Enough to let her breathe.

Her gaze slipped over Reid’s face. He looked as tired as she felt. A faint shadow darkened his jaw. His hair was still damp from the mist outside. He had been awake all night because of her.

Mason returned a few minutes later. “Whoever was here didn’t leave any fingerprints.”

“What about tracks?” Reid asked.

“Yep. Appears to be the same tread as the others you sent photos of. I’ll dust the room. Hopefully, something will turn up. We know we’re not dealing with a ghost.” Mason went to work.

Elise and Reid returned downstairs while Mason dusted for prints.

The dining room table still held the journal, photograph, locket, and recovered tin box. A blank place remained where the drawing had been.

Reid brought a lamp from the study and positioned it closer to the table. “You said the erased name may not belong to the second girl.”

“It extends too far left to be three letters.”

“There might be impressions beneath the crayon.”

Elise understood immediately. “When children write, they sometimes press through several sheets.”

“Exactly.”

Mason returned with the drawing sealed in plastic.

“Let me have a look at that drawing again.”

“Sure thing.” Mason handed it to him.

Reid retrieved a pencil and several sheets of plain paper from Thomas’s desk. He placed one sheet over the back of the drawing and shaded gently across the area near the erased name. At first, nothing appeared. Then faint grooves began to emerge. Curved lines. A vertical stroke.

Elise leaned in closer. “Is that an E?”

“Maybe.” Reid continued shading.

Another shape appeared beside it. An L. Then the beginning of a third letter, too faint to identify.

“El,” Elise whispered. The letters could form the beginning of her name.

Still, the E and L had been pressed into the paper long before the new message appeared.

Someone had written a name there. Someone had tried to erase it.

Elise gripped the table. “It was mine.”

“We don’t know that,” Reid said.

“What else starts with El?”

“A lot of names.”

“But the girl is marked E.”

“Yes.”

“Then maybe the erased name was Elise.”

Reid rested the pencil on the table. “If it was, why erase your name and leave the initial?”

The question stopped her. “I don’t know.”

“What if the E doesn’t stand for Elise?”

The room seemed to contract around her. “What else would it stand for?” She stared at the drawing through the plastic. The dark-haired child. Blue ribbon. The letter E. An erased name that might begin with El.

Every detail she had considered proof now seemed uncertain.

The anonymous message returned to her.

You’re remembering the wrong little girl.

Reid watched her carefully. “What are you thinking?”

“That someone knows exactly how to make me doubt myself.”

“Then don’t give them more power than the evidence does.”

“That sounds easy when you say it,” she told him.

“It isn’t.”

She looked toward him. He seemed to understand the difference between fear and weakness. Between doubt and defeat. Maybe because he carried fears of his own.

“What aren’t you telling me?” Reid asked.

The question caught her off guard. “About what?”

“Your childhood.”

“I’ve told you everything I remember.”

“I didn’t ask what you remember.”

His father’s advice came back to her. Listen longer than people expect. They’ll eventually tell you the truth.

Reid had been listening.

She lowered herself into a chair. “There is something.”

He sat across from her.

Mason came downstairs and found them. He seemed to realize they were in the middle of something. “I’ll take the samples out to the cruiser.” The deputy left, giving them privacy without being asked.

Elise folded her hands in her lap. “My mother used to wake me in the middle of the night.”

Reid’s shock was clear. “How often?”

“I don’t know. Enough that I remember the routine better than anything else from that time.”

“What routine?”

“She called them safety drills. She would come into my room and shake me awake. I had to put on my shoes and coat without turning on the lights. One suitcase was always packed in the hall.”

“How old were you?”

“Eight. Maybe nine.”

“What happened after you were ready?”

“Sometimes we went to the car. Sometimes we sat in the kitchen. She would listen at the windows until she decided it was safe.”

“Safe from your father?”

“She never said.”

“But you believed it was him.”

“I didn’t understand enough to believe anything.” Elise rubbed her eyes. “The last drill wasn’t practice. We actually left.”

Reid remained silent for a moment. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“It seemed like a strange childhood memory. My mother was anxious. She moved us constantly. I thought the drills were part of that.”

“Or her anxiety had a cause.”

Elise closed her eyes briefly. “What kind of mother teaches her child how to escape but never explains the danger?”

“One who is frightened that explaining will make it worse.” Reid’s gaze held no judgment.

“How do you do that?” she asked.

He appeared confused. “Do what?”

“See the reason beneath what people do.”

“I don’t always.”

“You did with her.”

He leaned back. “When my father was alive, I thought showing up meant fixing things. Catch the person responsible. Make the danger stop.”

“And now?”

“Now I know most situations don’t resolve that neatly. Sometimes people don’t need you to fix everything,” he continued. “They need to know they won’t face it alone.”

“I’m glad you showed up.” The words escaped before she could reconsider them.

Reid went still. Their eyes met. Neither looked away.

The awareness between them had been building quietly since the night before. In the kitchen. Over coffee. While standing too close beside the dining room table.

Now it settled into the silence with unmistakable warmth.

Reid’s gaze dropped briefly to her mouth before returning to her eyes. Elise’s breath caught.

His phone rang, shattering the moment. Reid pulled it from his pocket and glanced at the screen. “It’s the sheriff.” He answered. “Carver.”

Elise watched his expression change as he listened. “What kind of box?” he asked. A pause. “Don’t open anything else until I get there.” He ended the call and stood.

“What’s going on?” Elise asked.

“Ben found old records in a storage room beneath the original courthouse.”

“Records about my father?”

“One box.”

“What’s in it?”

“He doesn’t know yet.”

Reid picked up his jacket. “The box isn’t labeled as a case file.”

“What does it say?”

He met her gaze. “Property evidence. Thomas Warren.”

A chill moved through Elise. “Why would evidence connected to my father be hidden in a courthouse basement?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out.”

She rose.

Reid glanced toward the drawing and the fresh words written across the bottom.

Look closer.

For the first time, Elise wondered whether the message was directing her toward the drawing at all. Maybe someone wanted her to look beyond Coldwater Hollow.

Toward the people who had helped keep her father’s secrets buried.

Chapter Thirteen

The Evidence Box

Reid kept a careful eye on the rearview mirror as he drove toward Coldwater with Elise. No dark pickup appeared behind them. They weren’t being followed when he turned off the coastal highway and took the narrow road leading into town.

Still, he couldn’t relax.

Whoever had chained the gate at Coldwater Hollow had known exactly how long it would take to draw both deputies away from the house. They had slipped inside, climbed to Elise’s bedroom, and altered the drawing before disappearing through the hidden passage.

Calculated. Patient…and far too familiar with the property.

Next to him, Elise stared through the rain-speckled windshield. She’d changed into jeans and a dark green sweater before they left, but exhaustion remained visible in the shadows beneath her eyes. She clutched the silver locket in one hand. Her thumb moved across the engraving on the back.

Remember who you are.

Reid had tried not to watch her. He’d failed.

The moment between them in the dining room remained lodged in his thoughts. The quiet admission that she was glad he’d shown up. The way her gaze had held his. And the pull he’d felt toward her before the sheriff’s call.

He should be grateful for the interruption. Instead, part of him resented it. That alone told him he needed to be careful.

Elise was involved in an active investigation. Someone was manipulating her by using pieces of her childhood to destabilize her sense of reality.

She needed a deputy she could trust. Not a man distracted by the way her face softened when she smiled.

“Do you think Sheriff Lawson knew the box was there?” she asked.

The question pulled Reid back to the road. “No way.”

“You answered that quickly.”

“I’ve known Ben most of my life.”

“That doesn’t mean he tells you everything.”

“No.” Reid slowed as they entered town. “But he sounded surprised.”

“People can pretend to be surprised.”

He glanced at her. She continued looking out the window. “Is that the counselor talking?” he asked. “Or the daughter of a man who taught her not to trust anyone?”

Her lips compressed. “Maybe both.”

The answer concerned him. Before returning to Coldwater Hollow, Elise had built a life around careful reasoning and emotional control. In less than three days, someone had forced her to question her memories, her mother, her father, and now the people helping her.

That appeared to be the point. Isolation made people easier to manipulate.

“You can trust Ben,” Reid said to assure her.

She sighed. “I know you trust him, but that isn’t the same as me trusting him.”

“No.” Reid turned toward the center of town. “But it’s a place to begin.”

The original county courthouse stood two blocks from the sheriff’s office. The redbrick building had been converted into municipal storage years ago, after structural problems forced most departments into newer facilities.

Scaffolding covered part of the west wall. Sheriff Lawson’s pickup sat at the curb. Reid pulled in next to him.

Before Elise opened her door, he touched her arm. The contact was brief. Still, awareness moved between them with enough force that Reid immediately let go.

“What?” she asked.

“If anything inside becomes too much, say so.”

“I’m not going to fall apart.”

“I didn’t say you would.”

“It was implied.”

“No.” He held her gaze. “I’m saying you don’t have to prove anything to me.”

Some of the resistance left her expression. “Thank you.”

They climbed the courthouse steps together. Ben met them inside the lobby. His silvering hair looked as if he had run both hands through it several times. Dust streaked the front of his dark uniform trousers.

“You found the box yourself?” Reid asked.

“Building maintenance did.” Ben locked the front door behind them. “A water pipe burst in the basement last week. They’ve been moving records before the moisture reaches them.”

“Why call you?” Reid asked.

“It had a property-evidence tag attached.” Ben led them through the former courtroom.

The judge’s bench remained beneath a large county seal, though the spectator benches had been removed and replaced by metal shelving. Banker’s boxes filled most of the space.

Elise slowed near the center aisle.

Reid caught her hesitation right away. “What is it?”

“My mother brought me here once.”

Ben stopped. “You remember that?”

“Not clearly.” Elise looked toward the empty judge’s bench. “I remember sitting on one of those wooden benches. My feet didn’t reach the floor.”

“Do you remember when?” Reid asked.

“I don’t know.” A flicker of fear crossed her face as they continued.

Ben opened a door behind the old clerk’s station. “The basement stairs are through here.”

The air became cooler as they descended. Bare bulbs hung from exposed beams overhead. The basement smelled of damp concrete, rust, and old paper. Metal shelving created narrow aisles filled with forgotten records.

The evidence box rested on a table. It was smaller than Reid expected. Brown cardboard. Reinforced corners. A strip of yellowed evidence tape ran across the lid.

The handwritten label read: Thomas Warren. There was no case number or date. No deputy initials.

Reid approached the table. “Where was it found?”

Ben pointed toward the back wall. “Behind tax ledgers from the nineties. The shelf had been pushed against it.”

“So someone hid it,” Elise said.

“Looks that way,” Ben answered.

Reid examined the tape. The seal had been broken before. Someone had cut through the center and placed a second layer over it, though even that looked decades old. “This box was opened and resealed.”

“Can you tell when?” Elise asked.

He shook his head. “No.”

Reid retrieved gloves while Ben began documenting the process with his phone.

“You ready?” Reid asked Elise.

She stared at her father’s name. “No.” She drew a breath. “Open it anyway.”

Reid carefully sliced through the newer evidence tape and lifted the lid. Several items rested inside. A small cassette recorder. Three tapes in cracked plastic cases. A thick manila envelope. And a child’s blue hair ribbon sealed inside a clear evidence pouch.

Elise made a strangled sound. Her hand went to the back of her neck, as if she could still feel the ribbon tied in her hair. “It’s the same color.” The faded fabric matched the ribbon tied to the brass key, the strip left at the mailbox, and the thread recovered from the hidden passage.

It was as if the recurring blue had never belonged solely to Ivy. The drawing had shown it in Elise’s hair.

Reid lifted the evidence pouch. A label had been written across the front.

Recovered October 14, 2002. Warren residence.

“Recovered by whom?” Ben asked.

“There are no initials.” Reid turned the pouch over. Nothing.

Elise had lost all color. “That was the night my mother called the sheriff?”

“Yes,” Reid told her.

“Why wasn’t this mentioned in the report?”

The omission was too significant to dismiss. The responding deputy had recorded a verbal domestic disturbance, a frightened child, and Rachel’s intention to leave. He had not documented collecting evidence.

Yet somehow, an item from Coldwater Hollow had entered county storage that same night.

Reid set the ribbon aside. The three cassette tapes had dates.

October 11. October 12. October 14. Only the final tape had additional writing. E. Session.

Elise stared at it. “No. My father recorded me.” Her voice held no uncertainty now. “He must have.”

Ben shifted uncomfortably. “We don’t know what’s on it.”

“I do.” Elise pointed to the label. “That’s how he referred to me in the journal. E.”

Reid picked up the recorder. The battery compartment was empty, but an electrical cord had been wound around the back. “Is there an outlet?”

Ben found one near the base of the wall.

Reid examined the October 14 cassette before placing it in the machine. The plastic casing showed no obvious damage. He connected the recorder but did not press play. “You don’t have to listen.”

“Yes, I do.”

“You could hear something you aren’t prepared for.”

“I’ve spent twenty-four years not being prepared.”

The words struck him. Reid wanted to tell her that waiting would not make her weak. That she had already endured enough. But the decision belonged to her.

He pressed play. Static was all there was for several seconds. Then Thomas Warren’s voice filled the basement. Calm and measured. Professional.

“State your name.”

Silence followed. Reid glanced at Elise. She had gone completely still.

Thomas repeated the instruction. “Tell me your name.”

A child breathed near the microphone. The sound was uneven, as though she had been crying.

“Elise,” a little girl whispered.

Elise closed her eyes. Reid’s chest tightened. The voice belonged to her. He could hear traces of the woman she had become in the child’s careful tone.

Thomas spoke again. “And who were you before?”

A long silence followed. The tape hissed. “I don’t know.”

“You do know.”

“No.” A shaky little voice answered.

“Who were you in the garden?”

The child began breathing faster.

Reid’s hand moved toward the stop button, but Elise caught his wrist. “Don’t.”

Her fingers trembled against his skin. He left the tape running.

Thomas’s voice remained infuriatingly calm. “Tell me about Ivy.”

“She isn’t afraid.” There was a trace of anger in her voice.

“Like you are?”

“Yes.”

Ben shifted behind them.

On the tape, Thomas asked, “Where is Elise now?”

The child didn’t answer.

“Where is she?”

“She’s sleeping.”

Elise released Reid’s wrist. Her hand dropped to her side.

Thomas continued. “And who am I speaking to?”

The answer came so softly Reid almost missed it.

“Ivy.”

Elise stared at the recorder. No one moved. The tape continued to turn.

Thomas asked, “What does Elise remember about the garden?”

“Nothing.”

“What does she remember about her mother?”

“Nothing.”

“What does she remember about the well?”

A sharp click interrupted the recording. A warp in the tape.

Thomas’s next words stretched into an unintelligible groan before the machine stopped.

Reid pressed eject. The cassette refused to release.

“Don’t force it,” Ben warned.

Reid unplugged the recorder.

Elise’s attention remained fixed on the machine. Her expression had gone blank in the way people sometimes responded to overwhelming shock. The emotion was still there. Her mind had simply shut the door on it.

“Elise.” Reid stepped in front of her. “Look at me.”

Her gaze stayed on the recorder.

He touched her forearms. “Elise.”

Her eyes jerked to him. “That was me.”

“Yes.”

“And Ivy.”

He chose his next words carefully. “It was your voice.”

She pulled away. “You heard her answer.”

“I heard you answer using her name.”

The distinction hurt her. “You think I invented her.”

“I think your father was asking a frightened child questions no father should have asked.” Reid kept his voice steady. “We need someone qualified to evaluate the recording before we decide what it means.”

“I’m qualified.”

“Not when you’re the child on the tape.” She flinched. Reid regretted the bluntness but not the truth.

Elise turned away and walked several steps down the aisle. He followed, giving her enough space to breathe.

“I talked differently,” she said.

“You were a child.”

She shook her head. “No. When I said I was Ivy, my voice changed.”

Reid had noticed. The words had become firmer. Less frightened. But children adjusted their voices when pretending. Trauma could alter speech patterns. So could coaching.

He refused to jump to the conclusion Thomas seemed to have wanted.

“What are you thinking?” she demanded.

“That your father manipulated you.”

“That isn’t all. Just say it.”

Reid glanced Ben’s way. The sheriff remained silent, giving them privacy. “The tape suggests your father believed Ivy was connected to you.”

“Connected how?”

“I don’t know.”

She laughed once. It sounded brittle. “That answer is becoming useless.”

“It’s still honest.”

Her eyes shone with fear and anger. “I remember her standing beside me.”

“I know you do.”

“There are photographs.”

“There are photographs of another figure.” He corrected.

“And the drawing shows two children. The box under the fountain—” she added.

“Contained a damaged photograph.”

“You’re doing it again,” she snapped.

“Doing what?”

“Reducing everything until it means nothing.”

Reid absorbed the accusation. Maybe she was right. He had spent his career separating evidence from emotion. It kept him from making assumptions.

But Elise was not a case file. She was a woman confronting the possibility that the friend she had loved as a child might have existed only inside her own mind.

“I’m trying to keep someone else from telling you what your memories mean,” he said in a quiet voice.

Her anger appeared to falter.

“Your father did that once,” Reid continued. “Whoever is leaving these messages is doing it now. I won’t add my interpretation until we have facts.”

Elise looked back toward the evidence table. “What fact could explain that tape?”

“I don’t know yet.”

She closed her eyes. When she opened them, some of the anger had receded, leaving exhaustion. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t owe me an apology.”

“I accused you of dismissing me.”

“Believe me, Elise, I understand why.”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

“No.” Reid let the corner of his mouth lift. “But fairness isn’t always required.”

A faint smile touched her lips.

Before he had time to examine why the sight of it sent his pulse into overdrive, a door slammed upstairs.

Ben reached for his weapon. “We locked the courthouse.”

Reid drew his sidearm. He turned to Elise. “Stay here.”

She caught his sleeve. “Someone may still be up there.”

“That’s why you’re staying put.” He expected her to argue. Instead, she looked toward the recorder.

“What if they came for the tape?”

Reid followed her gaze. The evidence box had remained hidden for twenty-four years. Within hours of its discovery, someone had entered the courthouse. That was not a coincidence.

“Lock the door behind us,” he told her. He and Ben climbed the basement stairs. He waited for Elise to engage the lock before they moved to the courtroom that appeared empty.

Rain streaked the tall windows.

Ben checked the front doors. “They’re locked.”

Reid searched behind the judge’s bench and through the former clerk’s offices. Nothing.

“Reid!” Ben called from the hallway.

Reid followed his voice to the rear exit. The door stood open. Cold air pushed rain across the floor. The lock had not been forced. Someone had used a key.

Reid stepped outside. The alley behind the courthouse was empty except for overflowing trash bins. A strip of blue fabric had been tied around the inside rear door handle. Beneath it, a note had been pinned to the wood.

Reid removed it with gloved hands. Three handwritten words covered the paper.

Don’t trust him.

Ben stared at the message. “Who are they talking about?”

Reid looked back toward the courthouse basement. Whoever had left it understood exactly what Elise feared most.

And they were determined to make certain she trusted no one.

Chapter Fourteen

The Other Voice

Don’t trust him. The three words seemed to follow Elise down the courthouse stairs after she’d unlocked the door for Reid.

He walked a step behind her, one hand resting near his holstered weapon. Sheriff Lawson remained behind them long enough to secure the rear door and call for another deputy to search the alley.

Whoever had entered the courthouse possessed a key, knew the building’s layout, and had moved through it without attracting attention.

Elise could not stop wondering who the warning referred to. Her father? Sheriff Lawson? The law officer who had hidden the box?

Reid. The last possibility disturbed her most. His shoulders remained tense beneath his dark jacket, his attention sweeping the narrow aisles before he approached the evidence table.

Nothing about Reid appeared different. That was the problem with trust. Betrayal rarely announced itself ahead of time.

Reid stopped at the table and turned toward her. “Are you okay?” The question sounded sincere. So had every other question he had asked.

“I don’t know anymore,” she said with a weary sigh.

Something changed in his eyes as though he understood what she had not said. “The note was meant to do this.”

“Do what?”

“Make you question everyone around you.”

“Maybe the person who left it thinks I should,” she told him.

“Maybe.” Reid did not sound defensive. “But until we know who wrote it, we can’t assume the warning is true.”

Sheriff Lawson returned to the basement. “I have deputies checking the surrounding streets.”

“How many people have keys to the building?” Elise asked.

“Too many,” the sheriff said. “Current and former county employees. Maintenance. The renovation crew.”

Elise shifted his way. “And the sheriff’s department?”

“Yes.”

The direct answer did little to reassure her.

Ben appeared to recognize that. “You don’t know me well enough to trust me, Ms. Warren. I understand that.”

“Do you?”

“I would be asking the same questions.”

Sheriff Lawson took additional photographs of the remaining evidence, including how it was arranged in the box.

Once he’d finished, Reid lifted out the envelope. It had been sealed with evidence tape once, but the tape had been sliced through some time ago. The flap remained tucked inside rather than glued shut.

Reid looked toward Elise. “Do you want to continue?”

The tape recording still echoed in her thoughts.

And who am I speaking to?

Ivy.

She did not feel prepared to discover what else her father had done. But preparedness had ceased to matter the moment she entered Coldwater Hollow. “Yes,” she said though her voice was anything but steady.

Reid removed the contents and spread them across the table.

There were four documents. The first was a typed consent form bearing Thomas Warren’s letterhead.

Experimental Memory Integration Therapy

Elise read the title twice. A paragraph beneath it described the treatment as an innovative method for helping children separate traumatic memories from present identity. The language sounded professional. Reassuring. Carefully constructed to make frightened parents believe Thomas could save their children.

A signature appeared at the bottom. Rachel Warren.

Elise stared at her mother’s name in shock. “She agreed to it.”

Reid leaned closer. “Check the date.”

September 3, 2002. Six weeks before Rachel took Elise away.

“She knew he was treating me.” The betrayal cut deeper than Elise expected. “She signed the form.”

“Maybe she didn’t understand what he intended to do.”

Elise shook her head. “It explains it clearly enough.”

“Does it?”

She looked at him. “What do you mean?”

Reid pointed toward the dense paragraphs. “It says the treatment separates traumatic memories from identity. It doesn’t mention hypnosis, reinforcing another name, or recording a child while she’s terrified.”

Elise returned her attention to the consent form. He was right. The document described guided conversations, relaxation techniques, and structured recall. Nothing about encouraging a child to believe she had become someone else.

“She trusted him,” Elise said.

“He was her husband and a respected psychiatrist,” the sheriff told her. “She had no reason not to trust him.”

“Until she realized what he was doing and tried to stop him,” Elise said.

Reid nodded. “That’s what the evidence suggests.”

The second document was handwritten. Not in Thomas’s writing. Elise recognized the narrow letters immediately. Her mother’s.

Thomas,

This is not what we discussed. Elise is becoming more frightened, not less. She speaks about Ivy as if she is real. Yesterday she blamed Ivy for breaking the mirror, even though I watched Elise do it.

You told me this was temporary. You said giving the fear another name would help her talk about what happened. Instead, she is losing pieces of herself.

End the sessions.

If you refuse, I will take her away.

Rachel

Elise’s whole body went numb. She read the letter again, slower this time.

Giving the fear another name. “That sounds like Ivy was part of the treatment,” Elise said.

Reid agreed.

“Something my father created.”

“We don’t know the full purpose yet,” he reminded her.

“My mother says it.”

“She says your father gave the fear of recurring nightmares another name.”

“Ivy.”

“Most likely,” Reid answered.

The professional part of Elise’s mind began arranging the facts before the rest of her could resist them. A traumatized child. A controlling psychiatrist. Guided questioning. Identity separation. A second name was introduced as a way to discuss fear.

Thomas may have believed he was creating emotional distance between Elise and whatever had happened to her.

Instead, he had given the frightened part of his daughter a separate identity.

“No.” Elise stepped away from the table.

Reid’s attention followed her. “Elise.”

“I remember playing with her. She spoke to me.”

“I believe you remember that.”

The careful way Reid worded it made her turn on him. “You believe I remember it, but you don’t believe it happened.”

“I believe something happened.”

“That isn’t the same thing.”

“No.” His honesty hurt more than reassurance would have.

Elise walked to the end of the aisle, needing distance from the box and the people surrounding it. The concrete wall stopped her. There was nowhere else to go.

She pressed both hands against the cold surface.

A memory rose without warning.

She was sitting beneath the dining room table at Coldwater Hollow. Her knees pulled against her chest.

Her father crouched several feet away. “You don’t have to be afraid, Elise.”

“I’m not Elise.”

“Who are you?”

She remembered staring at her shoes. Black patent leather with silver buckles. “Ivy.”

“Good. And what does Ivy do?”

“She keeps the bad things.”

The memory vanished. Elise’s breath caught. Not an image created from a photograph or a vague feeling. A conversation.

Her father’s voice was followed by her own answer.

She became aware of Reid beside her, though she had not heard him approach.

“What happened?” he asked.

She couldn’t look at him. “I remembered another session. He asked what Ivy did.”

Reid waited for her to say the words.

“I told him she kept the bad things.” The words trembled as Elise spoke them.

Behind them, Sheriff Lawson shifted near the evidence table but did not interrupt.

Reid lowered his voice. “That doesn’t prove Ivy wasn’t real.”

“It comes close.”

“No. It proves your father encouraged you to use Ivy’s name during his sessions.”

“Why are you arguing with me? You’ve been questioning her existence since you arrived.”

“I’ve been questioning the evidence.”

“And now the evidence says I was Ivy.”

“The evidence says Thomas manipulated your understanding of who Ivy was.”

Elise finally faced him. Compassion filled his eyes. “You aren’t afraid I’m unstable?” she forced herself to ask.

“Never. I’m afraid someone hurt you.” The answer slipped through the defenses she had spent years building.

She looked away before he could see how close she was to losing control. She didn’t remember the trauma her mother was trying to protect her from. Her biggest fear was that soon she would.

Sheriff Lawson cleared his throat. “There are two more documents.”

Elise did not want to return to the table. She did anyway.

The third page contained brief clinical notes in Thomas’s handwriting.

Subject E demonstrates increased ability to transfer distressing memories to alternate construct. Resistance decreases when construct is addressed directly. Rachel remains opposed to continued reinforcement.

Alternate construct. The clinical phrase felt obscenely detached. He had not written daughter or patient. Just Subject E.

The final line had been underlined.

Ivy now responds independently.

Elise stared at the statement.

“What does independently mean?” Ben asked.

“It could mean my father asked a question and I answered as Ivy without being prompted to change roles.” Elise studied the underlined sentence. “But I don’t think that was what he intended. He created Ivy to be fearless, controlled, and obedient—the child he wanted me to become. Only he couldn’t control what I said once I answered as her.”

Reid’s expression hardened. “The anger was still yours.”

“Yes. He gave my fear another name, but he couldn’t separate it from everything else I felt. Ivy began saying the things I was too frightened to say as Elise.” She glanced at the cassette recorder. “In certain forms of therapy, a patient may be encouraged to speak from another perspective. Their younger self. Their anger. Their fear.” She struggled to keep her tone professional. “But the therapist has to maintain the boundary. The patient must understand it is symbolic.”

“And Thomas didn’t.”

“No. He encouraged me to believe the boundary was real.”

The fourth document was a photograph. Unlike the others, it had been folded in half.

Reid opened it carefully and laid it flat. The picture showed the interior of Thomas’s study.

Elise recognized the desk and shelves immediately, though the furniture appeared newer. Her father sat in one chair, holding a notebook. Across from him was a little girl in a pale dress. Elise. She was turned partly toward the camera, her face visible in profile. Her dark hair had been tied back with a blue ribbon. No second child appeared in the room. Yet an empty chair had been placed beside her.

On the back of the photograph, Thomas had written:

Ivy’s chair must remain present even when E insists she is absent.

Elise closed her eyes. Ivy had possessed a chair. A place at the table. Space in photographs. Perhaps even clothes.

Her father had taken an idea and given it physical form. He had made it easier for a frightened child to believe another girl lived beside her.

“No wonder I remember her,” Elise whispered.

Reid stood close enough that his arm brushed hers. “He surrounded you with evidence of her.”

“False evidence,” she said with a bitter catch.

“Evidence you had no reason to question as a child.”

The damaged family photograph came back to her. The narrow blue sleeve beside her. Someone had been cut away. Except perhaps no one had ever occupied that space. Her father could have positioned blue fabric beside her. Created the illusion of a second child. Then removed it later to make Elise question what she remembered. The cruelty of it left her cold.

“Why would he do this?”

“We still don’t know what happened before the treatment began,” Reid said.

Elise looked toward the cassette tapes. October 11. October 12. October 14. “The other recordings.”

Reid followed her gaze. “We should have the tapes copied before playing them. The first one nearly jammed.”

“We may not have time.”

“Why?” he asked with a frown.

“Someone came here within hours of the box being found.” Elise glanced toward Sheriff Lawson. “They may have wanted to destroy it.”

Ben nodded. “I’ll move everything to secured evidence storage.”

“Someone with a courthouse key got into this building,” she reminded him.

“The sheriff’s office uses a separate system.”

“Can you guarantee no one else has access?”

His hesitation answered her.

Reid’s phone rang.

He pulled it from his pocket. “It’s Mason.” He answered the call. “What happened?”

Elise watched his expression change to concern. “We’re on our way.” He ended the call.

“What happened?” Elise asked.

“Someone came onto the property.”

Fear spiraled through her body. “Is Mason hurt?”

“No. He saw movement near the back of the house and followed it into the woods. By the time he realized it was a diversion, someone had entered through the hidden passage.”

Elise grabbed her coat.

Ben placed the documents back into the box. “I’ll secure this and follow you.”

Reid caught Elise’s hand before she could turn away. The contact stopped her. His grip was warm and firm. “Listen to me. Whoever went inside may still be nearby.”

“I’m not staying here.”

“I’m not asking you to.” His thumb shifted against her knuckles. “I’m asking you to stay beside me when we arrive.”

She looked at their joined hands. Then into his eyes. The warning upstairs returned.

Don’t trust him.

Whoever had written it wanted this moment to feel dangerous. They wanted Reid’s touch to raise questions instead of offering comfort.

Elise made a choice. “All right.”

He released her, but the warmth remained. They hurried through the courthouse and out into the rain. Reid unlocked his vehicle, and Elise climbed into the passenger seat.

Before they had cleared the center of town, his phone rang again. Mason’s name appeared on the display. Reid put the call on speaker.

“I checked the exterior again,” Mason said. His breathing sounded uneven. “No sign of anyone else.”

“Did you enter the house?”

“Only as far as the study.”

“Is anything missing?” Elise asked.

A pause followed. “They didn’t appear to take anything. But they left something.”

Reid’s grip tightened on the wheel. “What?”

“The hidden passage was open. There’s a cassette recorder sitting in the middle of the study floor.”

“Is there a tape inside?” Elise asked.

“Yes,” Mason told them.

“Does it have a label?”

Another pause. When Mason answered, his voice had changed to disbelief. “It has an E on it.”

Reid accelerated toward Coldwater Hollow. Elise stared at the road ahead. Her father’s recordings had been hidden for twenty-four years. But this tape didn’t come from the evidence box. Someone had kept it. Someone who knew exactly what Thomas had done to her.

And they had decided it was finally time for Elise to hear the rest.

Chapter Fifteen

The Missing Tape

Reid drove faster than he should have on the rain-slick road leading toward Coldwater Hollow.

The wipers struggled to keep pace as the storm rolled in. Headlights reflected off the wet pavement, turning every curve into a shifting tunnel of darkness and glare.

Beside him, Elise sat rigidly with both hands clasped in her lap.

Neither of them spoke.

There was nothing useful to say until they reached the house and saw what had been left behind.

Still, the silence gave Reid too much room to think. Someone had entered the courthouse with a key. Someone else—or possibly the same person—had drawn Mason away from Coldwater Hollow and slipped into the house through the hidden passage.

That person knew about the recordings. They had known exactly when to return. The evidence box had remained hidden for twenty-four years, yet within hours of its discovery, someone had entered both locations connected to it.

“Do you think the person at the courthouse and the person at the house are the same?” Elise asked, breaking the silence.

Reid considered it for a moment before answering. “Probably.”

“You don’t sound certain.”

He looked her way. “I’m not.”

She shifted toward him. “Why would two people be involved?”

“One could have watched the courthouse while the other went to the house,” he reasoned.

“That would mean they planned this before the box was found.”

“Exactly.”

Her attention returned to the windshield. “That’s what I was afraid you’d say.”

Reid slowed for a sharp bend in the road. “Whoever is doing this knows the evidence existed. They were watching us. They probably followed us to the courthouse,” he told her.

The figure near the woods. The dark pickup. The blue ribbon tied to the mailbox.

Reid had resisted connecting every unexplained detail to one person. Investigations went wrong when facts were forced into a pattern too soon. Now the pattern was becoming difficult to ignore.

“They may have been watching since you arrived,” he said.

Elise rubbed both hands over her arms. She appeared shaken by everything.

More than anything, he wanted to reach for her hand. The impulse came too quickly and with too much force.

Instead, he kept both hands on the wheel. The note from the courthouse returned to him.

Don’t trust him.

Someone wanted Elise to doubt those around her. The warning could have referred to Thomas Warren or Ben Lawson. It could have meant the deputy who hid the evidence box.

But Reid suspected the ambiguity was intentional. The message would grow stronger every time she looked at the men around her.

“About the note,” he began.

She squared her shoulders. “I know what you’re going to say.”

“Do you?”

“You’re going to tell me not to let it affect what I believe.”

“I was going to say you should question me.” Reid kept his attention on the road. “You should question everyone involved in this.”

“That’s not very reassuring.”

“It isn’t supposed to be.”

“What is it supposed to be?”

“Honest. Trust shouldn’t mean ignoring doubts. It means asking hard questions and paying attention to the answers.”

“And if I don’t like yours?”

“Then you decide what to do with that.”

Elise watched him for several seconds. “You’re not going to try to convince me?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Why?”

“Because whoever left that note wants me to.”

Understanding dawned in her eyes.

If Reid became defensive, he would make the warning feel justified. If he pushed too hard for her trust, he would become part of the manipulation.

“I don’t want to doubt you,” she said quietly.

The admission affected him more than it should have. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “Then don’t let a stranger make the decision for you.”

The iron gate appeared ahead. Mason’s cruiser sat across the drive at an angle, blocking access to the property. Its emergency lights flashed silently through the rain.

Reid pulled up beside it. Mason stepped from beneath the cover of the trees, his jacket soaked through. Mud covered one knee of his uniform pants.

Reid was out of the vehicle before the engine stopped. “You hurt?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Tell me what happened again.”

Mason gestured toward the woods behind the house. “I saw movement near the rear tree line. Looked like a man in a dark jacket. I called out and followed when he ran.”

“How far?”

“Maybe a hundred yards. Then I realized he was leading me downhill, away from the house.”

“Did you see his face?”

“No,” Mason confirmed what Reid believed he already knew. “His hood was up.”

“Height?”

“About six feet. Medium build.”

“Vehicle?”

“Nothing I could see.”

Elise got out and joined them. “How long were you away from the house?”

“Three minutes. Four at most.”

“That was enough,” Reid said.

Mason looked toward the Victorian. “I checked the exterior when I came back. The rear passage door was open.”

“Did you touch the recorder?”

“No. When I saw it, I called you.”

“Good.” Reid drew his weapon. “Elise, stay here with Mason.”

“You told me to stay beside you,” she argued. “I’m not sitting in the car while you go in there.”

“You won’t be alone. Mason will stay with you.”

Mason nodded. “I’ll keep her safe.”

Elise glanced between them with anger flashing in her eyes. “This is my house.”

“And right now it’s an unsecured crime scene,” Reid said. “Give me ten minutes.”

She looked ready to argue. Her attention slowly moved to the dark windows. “Fine. Ten minutes.”

Reid crossed the drive and climbed the porch steps. The foyer lights were on. Nothing appeared disturbed.

He stood there and listened. Rain struck the windows. Wind moved around the eaves. The grandfather clock marked the seconds with a steady tick. No movement.

Reid cleared the first-floor room by room before entering the study. The hidden bookcase was as Mason left it. A portable cassette recorder sat in the center of the rug.

It was newer than the one they found in the evidence box. Black plastic. Battery-operated. No dust. A white adhesive label had been placed across the cassette door.

E.

Reid scanned the room before approaching. Nothing else appeared out of place. The intruder hadn’t wanted to take anything. They’d come to add something.

He crouched several feet from the recorder. A thin wire extended from the back. He followed it with his gaze. The wire ran beneath the edge of the rug.

He looked closer. Realized it wasn’t a wire but a fishing line.

Reid stepped backward. The line disappeared beneath the desk. He moved carefully around the room and used his flashlight to look underneath. A small glass jar had been positioned against the baseboard. The fishing line was tied around its neck and connected to the recorder.

The jar contained nothing more threatening than loose nails. A crude noise device.

If someone lifted the recorder without noticing the line, the jar would topple and spill across the floor. Not enough to hurt anyone, but enough to create panic and make a person believe someone else was still inside the room.

Reid released a slow breath. Every action had been designed to unnerve. He hit his mic. “Mason, the house is clear. Bring Elise inside through the front entrance.”

A few minutes later, they entered the study together.

Mason stopped when he saw the fishing line. “I didn’t notice that.”

“You weren’t supposed to.”

Elise remained near the doorway. Her gaze fixed on the recorder. “Can we play it?”

“Not yet.” Reid pointed toward the line. “It was rigged to knock over that jar if anyone picked it up.”

She looked beneath the desk. “Are those nails?”

“Yep. Just enough noise to make someone think they weren’t alone.”

“Another trick.”

“Exactly,” Reid ran a hand across the back of his neck.

“Like the chair. The photographs. The blue fabric.”

Reid understood what she meant. Thomas had surrounded her with false evidence as a child. Now someone was doing the same thing again. Creating fear through suggestion. Making ordinary objects carry more meaning than they should.

“What if this person learned it from my father?” she asked.

The possibility had occurred to Reid before. “We should be able to get a list of anyone who worked with your father in the past.”

Mason nodded. “Ben can start with employment records and medical licensing files.”

Elise remained focused on the recorder. “Whoever left this had access to one of his tapes.”

“Or made a copy.”

“Why label it with my name?”

“Because they want you to listen.”

“Then we should.”

Reid wanted to disagree. The tape could be another manipulated recording. Words spliced together. A false narrative designed to push Elise toward a particular conclusion. But refusing to play it wouldn’t protect her. It would only delay the inevitable.

“We record everything,” he said. “No one touches the original cassette until it’s photographed.”

Mason retrieved an evidence kit from his cruiser. They documented the recorder, the fishing line, and the jar before disconnecting the trap. Once Mason had dusted the outside for prints, Reid brought the recorder to the desk using gloved hands.

Elise stood across from him.

“You don’t have to hear it tonight,” he said, wishing to spare her any more painful discoveries.

“That person came into my house to leave this for me.” Her voice remained calm, though fear trembled beneath it. “I need to know why.”

Reid glanced Mason’s way.

The deputy moved to the doorway. “I’ll check the perimeter again.”

Reid understood the gesture for what it was. Giving them privacy.

When Mason left, Reid inserted a blank digital recorder beside the cassette player and activated it.

“Elise.” She met his gaze. “If you want it stopped, say so.”

She smiled. “I will.”

He pressed Play. A faint scraping sounded before Thomas Warren spoke. “Today is October 13th.”

Elise gripped the back of the chair in front of her. The missing date from the journal.

Thomas continued. “Elise remains resistant to integration. Ivy is presenting more frequently and without direct prompting.”

A child sniffed near the microphone.

“Where’s your mother?” Thomas asked.

“She’s packing.”

“Why?”

“Because she hates you.” The childish anger was clear in Elise’s voice.

Reid glanced at Elise. Her face had lost all color.

Thomas’s voice remained controlled. “That isn’t true.”

“She said you’re making me sick.”

“Rachel is confused.”

“No! You’re confused.” The child’s tone became stronger and more defiant. Elise understood now. Thomas had created Ivy to make her easier to control, but the persona had given a frightened child permission to resist him. Every angry answer he recorded as proof that Ivy existed had actually belonged to Elise.

Thomas paused. “Who am I speaking to?”

“You know who I am.”

“I want you to tell me.”

“Ivy.”

“What does Elise remember?” Thomas asked.

“Nothing.”

“Why is that?”

The lack of emotion in Thomas’s voice amazed Reid.

“Because I hide it.”

“Where?”

Silence.

Thomas repeated the question. “Where do you hide the memories?”

“In the garden.”

Reid’s attention shifted to the dark window where the garden was just outside. Where they’d found the tin box beneath the fountain.

Thomas asked, “What did you put there?”

The child began to cry. “I didn’t do it.”

“Elise did.”

“No!” The Ivy persona was becoming more emotional.

“What did Elise do?”

The crying intensified. “She opened the door.”

“What door?”

“The little door.”

Reid looked toward the hidden passage.

Thomas’s voice grew more insistent. “Where does it lead?”

“You know.”

“Tell me.”

“To the room under the ground.”

Elise’s grip slipped from the chair.

Reid crossed to her. She raised one hand, stopping him.

On the tape, Thomas asked, “What happened in the room?”

A muffled sound interrupted the recording. “Turn that off.” A woman’s voice. Rachel?

Footsteps approached.

Thomas said something too low to understand.

The woman’s voice rose. “I said turn it off. You told me you had stopped these sessions.”

“Elise needs treatment.”

“She needs protection from you!” she spat out.

A chair scraped back. The child screamed. Then another sound entered the recording. A man’s voice. Not Thomas. “Rachel, take her upstairs.”

Reid frowned. He knew that voice.

The man spoke again. “Thomas...this has gone far enough.”

The tape clicked off. Silence settled over the study.

Elise watched him. “Do you know him?”

Reid didn’t answer immediately.

He’d heard that voice thousands of times growing up.

It belonged to his father.

Chapter Sixteen
The House Remembers

Sudden darkness swallowed the room so completely, for one disorienting heartbeat, Reid thought the tape had somehow pulled them back into the past.

Then instinct took over. “Elise.” He crossed the room in two strides, placing himself between her and the open doorway. His flashlight was already in his hand, the beam cutting through the blackness as he swept the study.

Nothing moved. The only sound came from the rain battering the windows and the ticking of the old grandfather clock somewhere in the front hall.

Mason’s voice carried from the foyer. “Power’s out!”

“I’m checking the first floor,” Reid called. “Stay with Elise.”

“I can stay with myself,” Elise protested, though her voice lacked its usual confidence.

“You can,” Reid agreed without taking his eyes off the doorway. “Humor me anyway.”

Without waiting for another argument, he stepped into the hall.

The flashlight illuminated portraits whose painted eyes seemed to follow him through the darkness. Every creak of the old Victorian sounded louder now that the electricity had failed. He moved room by room, clearing each with practiced precision.

The library, dining room, and kitchen were all empty. Only shadows and the steady dripping of rainwater against the windows.

He paused at the rear entrance. The door remained locked. No fresh footprints crossed the wet porch beyond the glass.

If someone had entered the house after leaving the recorder, they had already disappeared. Or maybe they hadn’t been inside when the lights failed.

Reid stepped off the back porch. Cool rain immediately soaked the shoulders of his jacket. “Mason,” he called out.

The deputy emerged from inside. “Did you find something?”

Reid shook his head. He looked toward the garden. Darkness concealed the fountain where Elise had discovered the buried tin box only hours earlier. Whoever was orchestrating this knew exactly where to strike. Not physically. Psychologically. Every clue they left reopened another wound Thomas had created.

They weren’t trying to hide the past. They wanted Elise to relive it.

“Let’s check the breaker,” Reid said. They crossed to the small utility shed behind the house.

Mason opened the panel with his flashlight trained on the switches. “They’re all on.”

Reid thought that strange. “No tripped breakers?”

“Nothing.” Mason’s light shifted upward. “Reid.”

The overhead service line feeding the house sagged several feet below its normal position. They followed it to the utility pole where the cable had been severed cleanly, leaving one end dangling. There was no fallen limb nearby and no sign the wind had torn it loose.

Someone with the proper equipment and enough electrical knowledge not to kill himself had deliberately cut power to the house.

“This wasn’t the storm.” Someone had plunged Coldwater Hollow into darkness.

Reid’s attention shifted back to the dark silhouette of the Victorian. The timing was too precise to be coincidence. Whoever had left the recorder knew approximately when they would play it. Which meant they had either watched the house or understood Reid well enough to predict his next move. Neither possibility sat well with him.

“We need the utility company out here,” he told Mason.

“I’ll call it in.”

“And notify Sheriff Lawson.”

Mason nodded before stepping aside to make the calls.

Reid remained where he was, rain dripping from his hair. His father’s voice echoed through his mind.

“Thomas...this has gone far enough.”

He had heard that voice nearly every day of his childhood.

Jim Carver had never been a man who wasted words. If he said something had gone too far, it was because it had.

A movement near the porch caught his attention. Elise stood just outside the back door. She’d wrapped herself in one of the old quilts from the living room, though Reid suspected it wasn’t the evening chill making her shiver.

“You shouldn’t be standing out here,” he called.

“I could say the same thing.”

He managed the faintest smile. “Touché.”

She stepped onto the porch, stopping beneath its cover. “It feels like he’s still here,” she whispered.

He understood she meant her father. Every room held traces of the man who had convinced a frightened little girl that another child existed.

She swung his way. “My father couldn’t have done all of this alone.”

“No, he couldn’t.”

“Whoever’s behind this learned from him,” Elise said.

“Or he could have had a partner.”

She drew the quilt tighter around herself. “I keep trying to remember faces.”

“What do you mean?”

“The people who came to the house.” She closed her eyes. “I remember patients and neighbors. My mother’s friends.” Her brow furrowed. “There was someone else, but I can’t see them clearly.”

“Was it a man?” Was it his father?

“I think so. I don’t believe he was a patient. He carried books.”

The words came almost as a surprise.

That didn’t sound like his father, yet clearly he’d known Rachel and Thomas as well as Elise. “What else?”

She opened her eyes. “It’s gone. I almost had it.”

“You’ll remember when you’re ready.”

She laughed, though there was no humor in it. “That’s exactly what I tell my own patients.”

“And it’s still true.”

For the first time that evening, some of the tension etched on her face eased.

Headlights appeared through the trees. Two sets. One belonged to the county utility truck. The other was Sheriff Ben Lawson’s SUV.

Ben climbed out and took one look at Reid before asking, “What happened?”

Reid glanced at the house. “A lot. We need to talk.”

Ben studied him for a long moment. “This about the recorder?”

The utility crew moved toward the severed service line while Ben joined Reid and Elise beneath the porch roof.

“Yes. There’s something else on the tape.” Reid swallowed. “My father’s voice.”

 Shock rippled across Elise’s face. "Your father?"

Reid slowly nodded. He should have told her the moment he recognized his father's voice, but there hadn't been time to explain what he'd heard or what it might mean.

“Show me,” Ben told him.

“It’s in the study,” Reid told him.

“Let’s go inside.” He removed his rain jacket as he stepped inside the house and followed Reid and Elise to the study. The utility crew continued working outside, their floodlights shining through the windows while generators hummed somewhere near the road. The beams cast long shadows across the room, making the old Victorian feel no less unsettling.

Ben’s gaze shifted from Reid to Elise before turning on the cassette recorder still resting on the desk. “You’re positive it’s your father on the tape?”

Reid nodded. “There’s no doubt. It’s near the end.”

Ben removed his hat and ran a hand through his damp, gray hair. “Play it.”

Reid rewound the battery-powered recorder to the point where Rachel Warren’s voice interrupted Thomas’s questioning.

Rachel’s voice rose with unmistakable anger.

“I said turn it off. You told me you stopped these sessions.”

Thomas answered calmly. “Elise needs treatment.”

“She needs protection from you.”

A chair scraped violently across the floor.

Then another voice entered the recording.

“Rachel, take her upstairs.”

Ben’s eyes widened. Reid watched him carefully. The older sheriff leaned closer to the recorder.

The man spoke again. Thomas...this has gone far enough.”

The tape ended and silence returned. Ben didn’t speak right away. Instead, he stared at the recorder with a look like he’d heard a ghost.

Finally, he let out a slow breath. “I’d know Jim Carver’s voice anywhere. I worked beside your father for almost fifteen years.”

“Do you have any idea why his voice was on that recording?”

Ben walked to the rain-speckled window overlooking the garden.

It occurred to Reid that Ben wasn’t surprised by the news. “You knew he’d been to Coldwater Hollow?”

“No.” Ben turned and folded his arms. “But I knew he didn’t trust Thomas Warren.”

“Why didn’t he trust my father?” Elise asked.

“Jim respected good doctors,” Ben told her. “He didn’t believe Thomas was one of them.”

Reid struggled with the news. “Why didn’t you tell me this when I first came out here?”

“There wasn’t any reason.” Ben gave a humorless smile. “At least I didn’t think there was.” He looked past Reid to the old bookshelves. “I was a rookie deputy back then. Your father had already been with the department for several years.”

“What happened?” Reid couldn’t stop himself from asking.

“Jim responded here more than once.” Ben paused, choosing his words carefully. “Most of the calls weren’t criminal.”

“What were they?” Elise whispered.

“Neighbors complaining about shouting.” He focused on Elise. “Arguments between Thomas and Rachel.”

Elise lowered herself slowly into one of the study chairs. “My mother never mentioned the police coming here.”

“I doubt Thomas wanted her to.” Ben sighed. “Your father always had an explanation. He’d say a patient had become agitated. Or someone misunderstood what they’d heard. He knew how to talk his way out of situations. And he always sounded reasonable.”

Reid remembered the clinical tone on the recordings. Even when speaking to his daughter. “My father didn’t believe him?”

“Not one bit.” Ben’s answer came without hesitation. “Jim told me once that Thomas looked at people the same way mechanics looked at broken engines.”

Elise’s hands clenched into fists. “As something to fix.”

Ben nodded. “Not people, but problems.”

The description fit far too well.

Reid leaned against the desk. “If Dad suspected something why didn’t he stop him?”

Ben’s shoulders sagged. “Because suspicion isn’t evidence. He kept taking his concerns to Frank Dugan.”

At the mention of the retired deputy’s name, Reid straightened. “What did Dugan say?”

“He thought Jim was chasing shadows. He said Thomas Warren was respected all over the state and he didn’t believe any judge would sign off on a warrant.” Ben’s attention landed on Reid. “They argued about it more than once.”

Reid absorbed the information. His father hadn’t ignored what was happening. He’d tried and failed. Jim Carver hadn’t stood beside Elise’s father. He’d stood against him.

Elise broke the silence. “You said my father always had an explanation.”

“He usually did.” Ben rubbed his chin. “But there was one thing Jim couldn’t explain.”

“What was it?” she asked.

“He told me Thomas wasn’t working alone.”

Reid’s attention sharpened. “There was another person involved.”

Ben frowned as he searched his memory. “Yes, a younger man. Late twenties, maybe. Always carrying a notebook. I figured he was a graduate student. Jim wasn’t so sure.”

Elise sat forward. “Wait. I remember someone.” Both men turned her way. Her eyes drifted to the fireplace. “He came for dinner more than once. My father introduced him as...” Her brows furrowed. “I still can’t hear the name.”

“What do you remember about him?” Reid asked.

“He was quiet and he smiled a lot. My mother didn’t like him.”

Ben exchanged a look with Reid. “Jim described the same man. He said he followed Thomas everywhere.”

Reid believed the investigation had just shifted.

“Can you find out who he was?” Elise asked.

Ben nodded. “It shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll start as soon as possible with hospital employment files. Medical board records. University archives. If he worked with Thomas Warren, his name is somewhere.”

The lights blinked. A second later, electricity surged through the house. The lamps flickered to life. For the first time all evening, Coldwater Hollow felt almost normal.

Ben picked up his hat. “I’ll have more deputies watch the property tonight.”

Reid walked him to the foyer.

As Ben reached the front door, he stopped. “There is one more thing. Your father never stopped asking questions. He believed someone had convinced Frank Dugan to let the Warren investigation die.”

“You think Dugan was bribed?”

“I don’t know.” Ben opened the door. “Dugan died six years ago, so we can't ask him. But his records may tell us what he took to the grave.”

After Ben drove away, silence settled over the house once again. Mason remained outside with another deputy who had arrived, checking the grounds.

Elise stood near the front window, watching the rain, when Reid joined her.

For a long moment, neither spoke.

“I was wrong,” she said at last.

“About what?”

“I thought hearing your father’s voice would make everything worse.” She watched him through the window. “It didn’t.” She pivoted his way. “It reminded me there was at least one person who tried to stop my father.”

“I only wish he’d succeeded.”

“So do I.” Without thinking, Elise closed the space between them and slipped her hand into his.

They stood together listening to the rain for a long time. After everything that happened, it was nice to have this period of reprieve away from the danger facing them.

And he was happy to share it with Elise.

When his phone eventually vibrated inside his pocket, Reid pulled it out. “It’s Ben.” Reid checked the time, shocked to realize almost an hour had passed since Ben had left them. He answered and put the call on speaker. “Did you find something already?”

Ben didn’t waste time. “I had Martha go through the archived files from the internal investigation into Dugan. Most of it was witness interviews and expense reports, but she found copies of several bank statements.”

“Why would his bank records be in the file?”

“Someone accused him of taking money in exchange for making evidence disappear. The department investigated, but they couldn’t prove where the money came from, so the case was closed.”

Reid’s gaze locked with Elise’s. “What did Martha find in the statements?”

“A deposit made six months after Dugan retired.”

Reid’s pulse accelerated. “How much?”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars.”

Reid let out a low whistle. “Do we know the source?”

“Not from the statement. It was deposited by a cashier’s check. Martha’s requesting the original transaction records, but the bank won’t release those without a court order.”

The words settled over them with chilling finality.

Outside, lightning illuminated Coldwater Hollow.

Somewhere in the darkness beyond the trees, someone had kept the truth buried for twenty-four years.

Chapter Seventeen

The Assistant

Morning dawned cold and damp at Coldwater Hollow.

The storm had passed sometime before dawn, leaving behind a low ceiling of gray clouds and water dripping steadily from the trees. Mist hovered above the garden, hiding the woods beyond the rear fence.

Elise stood at the kitchen window with a mug of coffee warming both hands.

Two deputy patrol vehicles remained outside. One deputy had taken the night shift near the front gate while another watched the rear of the property. Their presence should have made her feel safer.

Instead, it reminded her that someone had entered the house while a deputy stood only yards away. Someone who knew about the hidden passages had carried a recording of her childhood into Thomas Warren’s study and left it there as though placing the final piece in a carefully arranged display.

She’d barely slept. Each time she closed her eyes, she heard her father’s voice.

Where do you hide the memories?

In the garden.

Then Reid’s father’s voice. Thomas...this has gone far enough. Jim Carver had known something was wrong. He had entered Coldwater Hollow and confronted Thomas.

That knowledge should have comforted her. In some ways, it did

Jim Carver had noticed. He’d tried. But his presence on the tape raised as many questions as it answered. What had brought him to the house that night? How much had her mother told him? And who else had been there?

The man with the books drifted through Elise’s thoughts like a figure glimpsed through fog. Young with dark hair. Quiet and always watching.

She could almost see him seated at the dining room table while Thomas discussed work and Rachel pushed food around her plate without eating.

The memory dissolved whenever Elise tried to hold it.

Behind her, footsteps entered the kitchen. Reid appeared in the doorway wearing the same dark trousers and shirt from the night before. He had rolled the sleeves to his forearms, and exhaustion shadowed his face.

“You slept?” she asked.

“Maybe an hour.”

“That doesn’t really count.”

“It does in law enforcement.” He crossed to the coffeepot and poured himself a cup.

Elise watched him over the rim of hers.

“Ben called,” Reid said.

“When?”

“About twenty minutes ago. He’s already at the county records annex.”

Elise lowered her mug. “Has he found something?”

“Not yet. He requested access to the hospital employment files and Thomas’s state licensing records.”

“And Frank Dugan?”

“Ben is pulling everything connected to him.” The unexplained twenty-five thousand dollar deposit remained another weight pressing against the mystery.

Someone had paid Dugan. The most obvious explanation was that Thomas had purchased his silence. Yet the money appeared six months after Dugan retired, and Thomas’s professional life had already begun to collapse by then.

The timing bothered Elise. “I wonder when my father lost his medical license?”

“We’re not sure. Ben thinks it happened within months of your mother taking you away.”

“That sounds right.”

Rachel had never discussed Thomas after they left Oregon. She rarely mentioned Coldwater Hollow at all.

Whenever Elise asked about her father, Rachel’s answers remained brief. He was ill. He’d made mistakes. Leaving was the only way to protect them both.

As a child, Elise had assumed her mother meant Thomas was emotionally unstable.

Now she understood Rachel had been trying to describe something far more deliberate.

Reid leaned against the counter. “Ben wants us to meet him at the annex.”

Elise glanced toward the window. “Do you think I should go?”

“I think you should decide.”

“That sounds very reasonable. I figured you’d insist,” she told him.

“I’m trying something new.”

A faint smile tugged at her mouth.

He had offered her choices from the beginning, even when every instinct he possessed urged him to protect her by taking control. She had not recognized how much that mattered until now.

Thomas had made every decision for her. What she remembered. Believed. Who she was allowed to be.

Reid did the opposite.

“I’m going,” she said.

“I thought you might.”

Thirty minutes later, they left Coldwater Hollow beneath the watch of two deputies.

The county records annex occupied a converted brick schoolhouse two blocks behind the courthouse. The building smelled of dust, old paper, and the lemon cleaner used on the polished floors.

Ben Lawson waited for them in a narrow records room lined with metal shelves and gray filing cabinets. Several boxes covered the center table.

He looked as tired as Reid, though his expression carried the focused energy of a man who had already found enough to keep searching.

“I started with the hospital,” Ben said. “Thomas maintained an office there for eight years, but most of his research was conducted privately.”

“At Coldwater Hollow?” Elise asked.

“Some of it.”

Ben opened the top box. “According to the hospital administrator’s records, he also used space at a private clinic outside Eugene. The clinic closed years ago, but the state kept copies of its staffing reports.”

He handed Reid a thin folder. “These are the names of everyone officially assigned to Thomas’s research projects.”

Elise moved next to Reid as he opened it. The first page listed nurses, transcriptionists, and two psychologists she did not recognize.

Several names had been crossed out. Others had notes beside them indicating transfers or resignations. Reid turned the page.

A typed heading appeared at the top. Research Assistants. Three names followed. The first belonged to a woman who had worked with Thomas for only four months. The second assistant had been transferred to another hospital.

The third name stopped Elise’s breath. Nathan Hale. The letters blurred as a memory struck without warning.

A young man stood beside the dining room fireplace at Coldwater Hollow, holding a leather notebook against his chest. Thomas poured him a drink. Rachel entered carrying a tray. The moment she saw Nathan, her expression changed. It wasn’t surprise, it was fear.

Elise blinked, and the records room returned around her.

Reid was watching her. “You remember him.”

It wasn’t a question.

Elise touched the name with one fingertip. “I do. Nathan.” Saying it aloud made something shift inside her. A door opening a fraction. “He came to the house.”

“How often?” Ben paid her full attention.

“I can’t remember.” She closed her eyes, trying not to chase the memory too hard. “He ate dinner with us. My father spoke to him differently than he spoke to the others.”

“What do you mean?” Reid asked.

“Thomas didn’t treat him like an employee.” The impression came before the details. “He corrected Nathan constantly,” Elise continued. “Not just his work. The way he stood. The way he spoke.”

Ben glanced at Reid. “Sounds personal.”

“That’s how Nathan took it.” Elise could see Nathan more clearly now. He had been younger than Thomas but older than she remembered at first. He smiled often, but the smile never reached his eyes. He was always watching Thomas as though waiting for approval that never came.

“My mother didn’t like him.” Elise was positive she’d felt the friction between the two.

“What makes you say that?” Reid asked.

“She avoided being alone with him.” The certainty startled her. She remembered Rachel entering a room, seeing Nathan beside the piano, and immediately calling for Thomas.

Another fragment followed: Rachel gripping Elise’s shoulder as Nathan passed them in the hallway.

Stay away from him, she’d whispered.

Elise opened her eyes. “She warned me.”

“About Nathan?” Reid asked. “What did she say?”

“That I should stay away from him.” The rest remained beyond reach.

Ben pulled another folder from the box. “Then we need to find out exactly who Nathan Hale was.” He opened the file across the table. A black-and-white employment photograph had been clipped to the first page.

Elise stared at the man she hadn’t seen in twenty-four years. Dark hair. Narrow face. An expression that appeared pleasant until she looked directly into his eyes.

Another memory flashed of Nathan kneeling in front of her in the upstairs hallway. A blue ribbon looped around his fingers. “Your father says Ivy likes blue,” he had told her.

Cold spread throughout Elise. She stepped away from the table.

Reid caught her arm before she struck the filing cabinet behind her. “What did you remember?”

Elise could barely force the words past her lips. “Nathan knew about Ivy.” She couldn’t take her eyes off the photograph. Twenty-four years had changed nothing about the feeling the man stirred inside her.

Nathan smiled politely at the camera. His dark hair was neatly combed, his tie perfectly straight, and wire-rimmed glasses rested low on his nose. He looked unremarkable. The kind of young professional no one would remember passing in a hallway.

Except she did. At least she remembered some things. “He knew about her,” she repeated.

Ben slowly slid the personnel file closer. “Let’s see what we actually know about him.”

Reid remained beside Elise, close enough that she could feel the reassuring steadiness of his presence without him saying a word.

Ben opened the folder. “Full name is Nathan Andrew Hale.” He scanned the page. “He was hired as Thomas Warren’s research assistant in March of 2001. He has a master’s degree in psychology from the University of Oregon and was recommended by Professor Harold Whitcomb. No disciplinary actions.” He shook his head. “Nothing unusual.”

“Keep reading,” Reid said.

Ben flipped to the next page. “This is interesting.” He laid the document flat so they could all see it. “Research responsibilities. Patient observations. Session transcription. Case documentation. Clinical scheduling. Family interviews.”

The knot in Elise’s stomach twisted. “Wait, family interviews? That’s strange.”

Ben nodded. “Apparently, he wasn’t just filing paperwork. He was interacting with patients and their families.”

Reid rested one hand on the table. “That would explain why your mother knew him.”

Elise studied Nathan’s photograph again. “I remember him sitting in the living room. He always carried a leather notebook, and he wrote in it all the time.” Another memory broke free. “He almost never spoke unless my father asked him a question.”

“What did Thomas call him?” Reid asked. “A title or simply Nathan or Mr. Hale?”

“Just Nathan. I do remember that he expected Nathan to understand what he wanted before he spoke.”

Ben looked thoughtful. “Like someone he’d worked with for a long time.”

“Or someone he controlled,” Reid added.

That fit Thomas far better. Elise remembered another fragment. She stood near Thomas’s study. Nathan emerged carrying a stack of folders. He’d smiled and greeted her nice enough until Rachel appeared. She’d crossed the hallway in only a few quick steps.

“There you are.” Rachel had gripped Elise’s hand tight.

Nathan stopped smiling. “I was only saying hello.”

Rachel never answered him. She’d simply led Elise away.

The memory faded. “I believe my mother was afraid of him.”

“Afraid because of you?” Reid asked.

“Yes, I think so.”

“Did Nathan ever threaten you?” he asked.

“I don’t remember anything like that.” She searched for the right words. “I remember he just watched me, the way my father watched.”

“Both were observers,” Ben said. “Always studying.” The description seemed to trouble him. He opened another folder tucked inside the personnel file. “This appears to be his annual evaluation.” He skimmed the page before reading aloud. “Nathan demonstrates exceptional observational skills and unwavering dedication to ongoing research.” Ben stopped. “He was apparently very good at his job.”

“Who wrote that?” Reid asked.

“Thomas Warren himself.” Ben continued reading before something caught his attention. “Hmm, well, this is interesting.”

Elise braced. “What is it?”

“There’s another evaluation.” He turned the page. The second one was much shorter. “This is your father’s handwriting. I recognized it earlier. It says, ‘Nathan continues to require guidance in maintaining professional boundaries. Improvement expected.’”

“That’s strange,” Reid said. “I wonder what he meant by that.”

“Good question.” Ben shrugged. “It could mean almost anything.”

Elise looked at the photograph again. “Nathan never really seemed emotional.” She hesitated. “He seemed eager to please my father, though.”

Ben closed the evaluation. “That happens more often than you’d think. I’ve seen it with young officers who desperately want approval from senior deputies. They stop thinking for themselves and start believing the experienced person must always be right.”

“That’s a dangerous mindset for an officer,” Reid told them. “It appears Thomas would’ve encouraged that.”

“Absolutely.” In Elise’s mind, there was no doubt. Her father hadn’t wanted independent thinkers. He wanted followers. People who accepted his theories without question.

Ben continued through a different folder. His brows shot up. “This is interesting. Here’s Nathan’s resignation.”

Both Elise and Reid looked over his shoulder.

Effective immediately, I hereby resign my position as research assistant.

Ben flipped through the attached paperwork. “This was filed three weeks after Thomas Warren surrendered his medical license.”

Reid straightened. “He quit almost right away?”

“Looks that way.”

“What happened to him afterward?” Elise asked.

Ben reached into the box and searched for another file. “There’s nothing here. No forwarding address or employment history following his time with Thomas.”

“Maybe he left Oregon.” Elise thought it would make sense that he’d want to put what happened with Thomas behind him.

Ben pulled another directory from the shelf and searched several pages. “I don’t see another medical license issued in his name.”

“So he abandoned psychology?” Reid asked.

Elise couldn’t take her eyes off Nathan’s photograph. “He wouldn’t have just disappeared.” People didn’t simply vanish completely. Unless... “He planned to disappear,” she whispered.

“I’ll ask the state police to run a nationwide search,” Ben confirmed. “If Nathan Hale is alive, we’ll find him.” He hesitated. “There’s something else. Coldwater Hollow employed an assistant groundskeeper named Calvin Rusk during the last four years Thomas lived there.”

“Where is he now?” Reid asked.

“Supposedly somewhere outside Portland. But a vehicle registered to him matches the dark pickup you saw at the house.”

“That’s the accomplice. Then Nathan isn’t working alone.” Reid tapped the date with one finger. “Still, something doesn’t sit right. Nathan resigns. Thomas loses his license. Rachel has already taken Elise away.”

He looked from Ben to Elise. “That’s the exact moment this entire story goes silent.”

He was right. It was as though someone had reached into history and erased the rest. Nathan’s pleasant smile no longer seemed friendly. It looked like it was rehearsed. As if he had carefully practiced it.

A chill crept through her. “What if he never really disappeared?”

Reid’s gaze shot to her. “You think he’s been here all along?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. Whoever has been leaving the tapes and clues knows far too much about my father’s work.”

“I’ll tell you one thing,” Ben said. “If this man walked away after Thomas Warren’s career collapsed, he picked one remarkable time to disappear.”

Outside, a church bell struck noon. For the first time since returning to Oregon, Elise had a name attached to the shadow she’d remembered only in fragments.

Nathan Hale. The man her mother had warned her to avoid.

And somewhere deep inside, a feeling she couldn’t explain whispered that finding Nathan wouldn’t simply answer questions about Thomas Warren.

It would uncover a truth that someone had spent twenty-four years making sure no one ever discovered.

Chapter Eighteen

Ghosts in the Files

Morning sunlight filtered through the windows of the sheriff’s office, but it did little to brighten Reid’s mood. He hadn’t slept much since hearing his father’s voice on the cassette tape. Every time he closed his eyes, he heard the quiet determination in Jim Carver’s words.

“Thomas...this has gone far enough.”

His father had known. Maybe not everything. But enough to walk into Coldwater Hollow and confront Thomas Warren.

That realization changed everything Reid thought he knew about the investigation that had haunted the town for nearly a quarter century.

He parked beside the courthouse and glanced toward Elise.

She stared down at the phone resting in her lap.

“No answer?” he asked gently.

She shook her head.

“I’ve called six times.”

“Still nothing?”

“I left another voicemail.” She forced a smile that failed to hide her disappointment. “If she’s anywhere near the Alps like she said she would be, maybe she just doesn’t have service.”

Reid hoped that was true.

Rachel Warren was the one person who had witnessed Thomas Warren’s work from the inside. Every unanswered call made him wonder whether the silence was nothing more than bad timing—or something far more troubling.

“I’m sure she’ll call as soon as she can.”

“I know.” But the uncertainty lingered in her eyes. She slipped the phone into her purse before opening the truck door. “I hate waiting.”

“So do I.”

Together they crossed the courthouse parking lot toward the sheriff’s office.

Inside, Ben Lawson was already waiting.

Several banker boxes sat on the conference table in the records room.

Stacks of aging folders surrounded him, along with yellow legal pads filled with handwritten notes.

He looked up as they entered. “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.”

Reid pulled out a chair. “You said you found my father’s box.”

“I did.” Ben rested a hand on one of the banker boxes. “It wasn’t in evidence.”

“Where was it?” Reid asked.

“In storage. After Jim died, several personal items were boxed up before anyone knew what belonged to an active investigation and what didn’t.”

Reid frowned. “So this was overlooked.”

“Apparently.” Ben removed the lid. The faint smell of old paper drifted into the room. Inside lay a worn leather notebook, several manila folders, a folded county map, photographs, and a small cassette tape sealed inside an evidence envelope.

Reid immediately recognized the notebook. His father had carried it everywhere. The leather corners were rubbed smooth from years of use. Seeing it again caught him off guard.

He reached out almost instinctively, running his fingers across the cracked cover. “I haven’t seen this since...” He stopped. Since his father’s funeral.

Ben stepped back, giving him the space to open it himself.

The first page contained Jim Carver’s unmistakable handwriting.

Coldwater Hollow Investigation. No dates. No case number. Just observations.

Reid slowly turned the page. The entries were short. Concise. Exactly the way his father had always taken notes. Rachel Warren appears frightened, not deceptive. Child’s statements inconsistent with age but emotionally genuine. Another stated, Thomas answers questions intended for Rachel. Controls interview.

Reid felt Elise move closer beside him. “He noticed,” she whispered.

“He noticed your father speaking for your mother.”

Elise nodded. “My mother hardly spoke around Thomas.”

Reid continued reading. Need separate interview with Rachel. A few pages later: Request for second warrant denied by Dugan. The words were underlined twice.

Ben folded his arms. “That wasn’t in the official file.”

“I bet not.” Reid turned another page. His father’s handwriting grew more rushed. Evidence inside residence was inconsistent with Thomas’s explanation. Another note read, Thomas rehearsed answers before deputies arrived. Someone else assisted him.

Reid slid the notebook across the table.

Ben read the next line aloud. “Assistant present during interviews. Rarely speaks. Watches everything.”

“That’s Nathan,” Elise said.

Reid agreed. “He doesn’t mention a name, but who else could it be?”

Ben reached into the box and removed another folder. “This may answer that.”

Across the tab, someone had written in blue ink: Rachel Warren—Statement.

“It isn’t the official report,” Ben said. “It’s Rachel’s handwritten statement before it was typed.”

Elise appeared surprised. “She wrote her own?”

“Apparently Jim asked her to.” Ben carefully unfolded the yellowed pages.

The handwriting was neat but uneven in places, as though Rachel’s hands had been trembling while she wrote.

Reid scanned the first page. Rachel described Thomas becoming increasingly obsessed with memory, trauma, and identity. One sentence caught his attention. He pushed the paper toward Elise. “I think you should read this.”

She read the words aloud. “Thomas says Nathan understands the work better than anyone.” Elise swallowed.

“Keep going,” Reid said softly.

She continued reading. “Sometimes I think Nathan watches Elise more than Thomas does.” Her voice faltered. “I don’t know why Thomas trusts him so completely.” Elise lowered the statement. “My mother knew something wasn’t right.”

Reid nodded. “The question is, what did Nathan actually do?”

Ben reached for another folder. “I may have found the beginning of that answer.” He opened another folder on the conference table.

Unlike Rachel’s handwritten statement, this one contained only a handful of documents held together with a rusted paperclip. Across the top, Jim Carver had written a single word.

Assistant.

Reid exchanged a glance with Elise before opening it. The first page was a photocopy of Nathan Hale’s employment record from the Bangor Psychiatric Institute. Someone, Jim, most likely, had circled Nathan’s name several times in blue ink. Behind it was a typed interview summary. Interview conducted with hospital administrator, June 14.

Reid skimmed the page. “According to the administrator, Nathan rarely left Dr. Warren’s side. Listen to this. Mr. Hale often anticipated Dr. Warren’s requests before they were spoken. The two worked with unusual efficiency. Staff frequently joked that the assistant could read the doctor’s mind.”

“My father wouldn’t have joked about something like that.”

“No,” Reid agreed. “He would’ve expected it.”

Ben pulled out another sheet. “This one is from a nurse.” He scanned the statement. “Dr. Warren trusted Mr. Hale with responsibilities normally reserved for licensed physicians. No one questioned it because Dr. Warren insisted Mr. Hale possessed exceptional judgment.”

Ben lowered the page. “That shouldn’t have happened.”

“No,” Reid said. “It shouldn’t have.”

Elise stared thoughtfully at Nathan’s photograph. “I remember my father asking Nathan what he thought.”

Reid’s attention shifted to her. “About patients?”

She nodded slowly. “I was little, so I didn’t understand the conversations. But Thomas actually listened. My father never listened to anyone.”

Thomas valued Nathan’s opinion. That alone made the young assistant different from everyone else in Thomas’s life.

Ben turned another page. “This is one of your father’s notes.” Jim’s handwriting stretched across half the sheet. Nathan present during every significant interview. Claims only to observe. Believe otherwise. Need to determine extent of involvement.

Reid felt the familiar frustration that came from reading an unfinished investigation. His father had known enough to ask the right questions. He simply hadn’t lived long enough to answer them.

“What happened after this?” Elise asked.

Ben sighed. “Nothing.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve gone through every file we have.” He spread several folders across the table. “No follow-up interviews ever happened. Dugan shut it down.” Ben reached into the evidence box one last time. “There is one more thing.” He unfolded a county map. Red pencil marks covered the property surrounding Coldwater Hollow. Jim had drawn circles around the main house, the carriage house, the gardens, and the underground chamber Elise and Reid had discovered days earlier. Several handwritten notes filled the margins. Most were too abbreviated to understand.

One sentence wasn’t.

Reid read it aloud. “Warren rehearses. Assistant adapts. Rachel is terrified. Child is confused.”

Elise closed her eyes. “My mother was trying to protect me.”

“Yes,” Reid said quietly. “But no one listened.”

Ben flipped the map over. Another note appeared on the reverse. Much shorter. It appeared to be written in a hurry.

Need relationship between Warren and Hale. Something doesn’t fit.

Reid stared at the words. His father had seen it. Not what the relationship was. Only that there was one.

“What did he mean by that?” Elise asked.

“I don’t know. But Dad believed Nathan was more than an employee.”

Ben leaned against the table. “I think I can answer part of that.” He reached for the legal pad filled with notes from his morning’s research. “I expanded the search after you left yesterday.”

“You found something?” Reid asked.

“I found almost nothing.” Ben gave a humorless laugh. “And that’s the problem.” He turned the pad so they could see. “I searched driver’s license records all over the Pacific Northwest and there was nothing. I checked property ownership with the same result. There were no marriage records or professional licensing recorded under that name.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Elise told him. “Everyone leaves a trail.”

“Exactly.” Ben tapped the page with his pen. “Nathan Hale doesn’t. He simply vanished.”

“When?” Reid asked.

Ben slid Nathan’s resignation letter across the table once more. “As I mentioned before, the resignation was filed three weeks after Thomas surrendered his medical license.” He opened another document. “I checked Social Security employment history. The last reported wages under Nathan Hale’s name ended the same month. There was nothing else including tax filing after that.”

It wasn’t merely unusual. It was impossible.

“In twenty-five years of law enforcement,” Ben told them, “I’ve never seen someone disappear this completely.”

Unless...

Reid’s thoughts turned to the person who had slipped into Coldwater Hollow without leaving more than a few traces. The person who knew the hidden passages. Had left the cassette recorder. Who knew details no stranger should know.

Reid looked at Elise. “What if we’re asking the wrong question?”

She met his gaze. “What do you mean?”

“What if Nathan Hale stopped existing because he chose to become someone else?”

Ben looked down at Jim Carver’s notebook. His finger rested on the final unfinished sentence. Need relationship between Warren and Hale. “Reid, I think your father was closer to the truth than he realized.”

Reid closed the notebook. “We’re missing one piece. The biggest one. Who was Nathan Hale to Thomas Warren?”

Outside the records room, a deputy knocked on the open door. “Sheriff?”

Reid looked up as the deputy came inside.

“Sorry to interrupt.” He held out a message slip. “Dispatch just called. They’ve had another report from Coldwater Hollow.”

Reid’s pulse exploded. “What kind of report?”

The deputy’s expression grew serious. “The motion sensor on the rear gate activated again.”

The truth became clear to Reid. “We’ve got someone back on the property.”

Chapter Nineteen

The Last Memory

The drive back to Coldwater Hollow was silent.

Rain had begun again, a light drizzle that blurred the windshield as Reid guided the truck along the narrow road. Gray clouds hung low over the pines, swallowing the mountain ridges beyond.

Elise watched the familiar landscape pass by without really seeing it. Someone had returned to the property. Again.

The motion sensor had activated only minutes after they left to go to the sheriff’s office. Deputies responding to the alert found no one, but the message was unmistakable. Someone knew exactly where they were. And exactly when they’d be gone.

Reid slowed as the iron gate came into view. A patrol cruiser remained parked near the entrance.

Mason came over. “We searched every inch of the property. The home, carriage house, barn, gardens, even the tunnels.”

“And?” Reid’s hands tightened on the wheel.

“Nothing.”

Elise shook her head. “What about footprints?”

“The rain washed away anything that might’ve been there.”

“What triggered the sensor?” Reid asked.

Mason shook his head. “We don’t know. I checked the camera.” He handed Reid a tablet.

The grainy footage showed only a shadow slipping between two cedar trees before disappearing beyond the edge of the frame. It could have been anyone.

“They wanted us to know they’d been here,” Reid murmured.

Mason nodded. “That’s what it feels like.”

Elise looked toward the house. Its tall windows reflected nothing but gray sky. For the first time since arriving, Coldwater Hollow no longer felt like a place holding secrets.

It felt like a trap.

Inside, the house seemed unnaturally still. The deputies had searched every room. Nothing appeared disturbed.

The cassette recorder remained locked inside the evidence bag Ben had taken. Jim Carver’s notebook was safely at the sheriff’s office. Whatever the intruder wanted, it hadn’t been evidence.

Elise’s phone vibrated inside her jacket pocket. Her heart lurched. The screen displayed a foreign number. Italy. She answered before the second ring. “Mom?”

For a moment there was only static. “Elise? Oh, sweetheart.”

Relief flooded through Elise’s limbs. “Mom.”

“I’m so sorry. Service is sketchy and my phone died. I’ve been trying to reach you for two days.”

Tears stung Elise’s eyes. “I thought...”

She couldn’t finish the sentence.

“I know.” Rachel’s own voice trembled. “I listened to every message as soon as I could charge my phone.”

Reid looked over from the hallway. She gave him a small nod and mouthed, She’s okay.

He quietly stepped into the next room, giving them privacy.

Elise explained everything that happened. "Mom, I need to ask you something.”

Rachel was silent.

“It’s about Nathan.”

Rachel caught her breath. “You remember him? When you were little I prayed you never would.” She exhaled slowly.

“Why? Who was he?”

“He worked for your father.”

“I know that much.”

“No, you don’t understand, Elise.” Rachel’s voice turned cold. “He belonged to your father.”

“What do you mean?”

“He admired Thomas. Completely. I’ve never seen anyone devote themselves to another person the way Nathan devoted himself to your father. He believed every theory. Every experiment. And supported every terrible decision.”

Outside, rain peppered the windows.

“He wasn’t cruel,” Rachel continued. “Not the way your father could be. He was...quiet. If someone had met him without knowing Thomas, they would’ve thought he was kind.”

“But?” Elise asked, not sure she wanted to know.

“But he stopped asking whether something was right. He only asked whether your father wanted it done.”

Elise closed her eyes. A memory surfaced. Nathan kneeling beside her with a blue ribbon threaded through his fingers. Smiling. Patient.

Your father says Ivy likes blue.

The words echoed through her mind exactly as he’d spoken them years ago.

She pressed a hand against her forehead. “I remember.”

“What do you remember?” Rachel asked quickly.

“The ribbon.”

“Nathan’s doing.” Rachel sounded angry.

“He called me Ivy.”

“Oh, Elise...I know he did. I told him not to. I begged Thomas to stop. But once your father convinced himself Ivy was real...” Her voice broke. “He insisted everyone else treat you that way, too.”

The room tilted. Not because Elise believed Ivy had existed. She didn’t. Not anymore.

But because Nathan had willingly stepped into the illusion. Not as an observer. As a participant.

“Nathan helped dad convince me,” Elise whispered in shock.

“Yes.” Rachel didn’t try to soften the truth. “He helped reinforce what your father wanted you to believe. He repeated the stories. Praised you when you answered as Ivy. And corrected you when you answered as yourself.”

Another fragment broke loose. The upstairs playroom. Thomas sitting across from her. Nathan standing near the door.

Thomas asking, “Who are you today?”

When she’d answered Elise, Nathan had smiled gently. “Try again.”

Elise gasped. The memory struck with painful clarity. It hadn’t been Thomas alone. Nathan had been part of it. He had helped erase her.

Her phone trembled in her hand. “Mom...”

Rachel’s voice became almost pleading. “Listen to me very carefully, Elise.”

“I’m listening.”

The rain intensified outside. Rachel drew a shaky breath. “Nathan never stopped believing your father was right.”

For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

Elise finally found her voice again. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Rachel sighed. “I wanted to.”

“When?”

“A hundred times. But every time I looked at you, I saw a little girl who had already lost enough.”

Elise lowered herself onto the chair beside the windows. “I spent years believing something was wrong with me. I blocked out memories of my childhood completely.”

“Oh, sweetheart...” Rachel was crying now. “I was trying to protect you. I thought if I could get you far enough away from your father...eventually those memories would fade.”

“They did. But so did everything else.” Elise closed her eyes.

“You didn’t forget,” she said, her voice growing stronger. “You survived. There is a difference.”

Not every forgotten memory had been a failure. Some had been mercy.

“I’ve blamed myself every day,” Rachel continued. “I should’ve taken you away sooner. I should’ve reported Thomas years before I finally did.”

“You were afraid of him.” Elise realized the truth.

“Yes.”

“So was I.” Silence stretched between them. Finally, Elise asked the question she’d wondered for days. “Did my father ever love me?”

Rachel didn’t answer right away. When she spoke, her voice held heartbreaking certainty. “I think Thomas loved the idea of controlling people. He mistook control for love.”

The answer hurt. But it also brought an unexpected peace.

For years Elise had wondered what she had done wrong. The truth was nothing. Thomas had been incapable of loving anyone the way a father should.

“Mom...”

“Yes, sweetie?”

“If Nathan believed everything my father taught him, and he never stopped believing...” Elise’s grip tightened around the phone. “I think he’s still trying to prove my father was right.”

“Elise, listen to me. You have to get away from Coldwater Hollow. Now.”

“Mom, I can’t.” Elise rubbed her forehead. “I have to see this through to the end.”

“Honey, if Nathan is behind what’s happening, then he won’t see you as a victim.”

A chill crept through Elise. “How will he see me?”

“As Thomas Warren’s unfinished life’s work.”

The words seemed to steal the warmth from the room. Outside, thunder rolled somewhere beyond the hills.

Reid appeared in the doorway. He stopped when he saw Elise’s expression. “Everything okay?”

She held up one finger.

“I’m changing my flight,” her mother told her. “I’ll be in Oregon tomorrow. I don’t want you alone.”

“I’m not alone.” Elise looked toward Reid as she told her mother about him. “He hasn’t left my side.”

He offered a reassuring smile, though concern lingered in his eyes.

“Good. Listen to him, honey. I knew his father and he was a good man. Keep Reid close.”

“I will.”

“And Elise? I love you.”

Emotion caught in Elise’s throat. “I love you, too.” The call disconnected. For several seconds, she simply stared at the screen. Then she slowly lowered the phone.

Reid crossed the room. “How is she?”

“She’s coming here.”

Relief flickered across his face. “What did she tell you?”

Elise repeated Rachel’s warning while Reid listened without interrupting.

“So, Nathan wasn’t just helping your father.”

“No. He believed in him. Idolized him even.”

Reid nodded thoughtfully. “That fits everything we’ve uncovered.”

Before he could say more, Mason rushed in. “We finished another sweep of the property. We found something.” He held out a small evidence bag. Inside lay a narrow strip of faded blue ribbon like the others. “It wasn’t there before. We’ve searched those gardens twice.”

Reid took the bag. “Where did you find it?”

“Tied around one of the climbing roses.”

Elise came closer. The ribbon looked old. As though it had waited years to be found. Only it hadn’t. Someone had placed it there recently.

Reid’s expression hardened. “He was here. Again.”

Elise looked toward the rain-covered garden. A memory surfaced with startling clarity.

Nathan smiling as he tied a blue ribbon around her wrist.

“Now Ivy won’t be afraid.”

She staggered back a step.

Reid caught her arm. “Did you remember something?”

“They weren’t for me,” she whispered.

“What?”

“The ribbons.” She looked at him through tears. “They weren’t supposed to comfort me. They were supposed to remind Nathan which identity he wanted me to become.”

“He was conditioning you, just like your father.”

“Yes.” The thought made her sick. “And Nathan knew exactly why.”

A sudden movement outside the window caught Elise’s eye. A figure stood just beyond the garden. Half-hidden by the rain. Watching.

She blinked. The figure was gone. Only the swaying branches remained.

“Elise?”

She kept staring through the glass. “I thought I saw someone.”

Reid immediately stepped outside with Mason. The deputies spread across the lawn. Within moments, other voices could be heard.

When he returned, Reid confirmed no one was there now.

Yet somewhere beyond the mist, someone was waiting for the perfect moment to step out of the shadows.

Chapter Twenty

The Final Session

By evening, the rain had eased to a drizzle.

Two deputies remained outside. One watched the front drive while the other circled the rear of the property every fifteen minutes. Reid had checked the hidden passage himself. Twice.

Nathan might not be inside the house. But his presence lingered—in a blue ribbon sealed inside the evidence bag, in the hidden passages threaded beneath the house, and in the memories that had returned one piece at a time.

Nathan had helped her father create Ivy. He’d praised Elise when she answered to the false name. Corrected her when she answered as herself.

The realization infuriated her.

Thomas had spent years convincing her that her own mind couldn’t be trusted. Nathan had stood beside him and reinforced every lie.

Neither man had understood one simple truth. Elise had survived them both.

She remained in the study while Reid spoke quietly on the phone near the doorway. Ben had called less than five minutes earlier. From the tension in Reid’s shoulders, the conversation wasn’t routine.

“What did you find?” Reid asked.

A pause followed. His gaze moved toward Elise.

“All right. Don’t touch anything else. I’m coming.” He ended the call.

“What’s going on?” Elise asked.

“He found an envelope taped beneath the bottom drawer of my father’s old desk.”

“What’s inside?”

“He doesn’t know yet. The seal is intact, and Dad wrote your father’s name across the front.”

“Then we should go.”

Reid hesitated.

“What?”

“I don’t want you leaving the house. Mason and Deputy Clark will be stationed inside the house.” Reid crossed the room and stopped in front of her. “I’ll be gone twenty minutes. Thirty at most.”

“I’ll be fine.” Every instinct warned her not to let him leave. Yet the envelope might contain the answer they needed. Jim Carver had known Thomas’s investigation had been compromised. He might have discovered Nathan’s connection to Thomas before he died.

“You’ll call me as soon as Ben opens it?”

“Before.”

“And you won’t decide I need protecting from whatever it says?”

A faint smile touched Reid’s face. “I’ve learned better.”

“Have you?”

“Lock the door behind me. Mason will stay inside with you. Clark will continue watching the grounds.”

“Reid, that isn’t necessary.”

“Someone has entered this house more than once without being seen.” His tone left no room for argument. “I’m not leaving you alone in here.”

Elise recognized the determination in his expression and nodded. “All right.”

His fingers tightened briefly around hers. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“I know.”

Reid held her gaze for another second before turning toward the hall. At the doorway, he stopped. “I’ll be back.”

She nodded. “I’ll still be here.”

The moment the front door closed, the house seemed to pull in a fearful breath.

Mason entered a few seconds later and secured the deadbolt behind him. “Reid told me I’m on inside duty.”

“Apparently I can’t be trusted alone.”

“It isn’t you he doesn’t trust.” Mason positioned himself in the foyer where he could see the study, staircase, and front entrance. “Go do whatever you need to do. I’ll be right here.”

Elise left the study and climbed the stairs. Mason’s presence should have reassured her. It did. A little.

For days, every room had seemed connected to something terrible. Thomas’s study. The underground chamber. Her childhood bedroom. Tonight, they seemed smaller. Almost ordinary.

She went upstairs.

The house had only possessed the power she gave it. And she was done giving it, and her father, power.

She paused outside what had once been her playroom. The door was open. Faded wallpaper covered the walls, its pattern of tiny blue flowers dulled by age. A wooden shelf leaned slightly above the empty fireplace. Dust lay across the floorboards, except where investigators had passed through.

Mason’s radio crackled downstairs.

“Mason, I need you out here.” Clark’s voice was strained. “The dark pickup just came through the gate.”

Elise moved to the railing as Mason opened the front door.

“Stay upstairs,” he called to her. “Lock yourself in the bedroom. I’ll be right back.”

Before she could answer, he disappeared outside. The door closed behind him.

Elise stepped inside the room. This was where Thomas had once told her Ivy played, yet there had been no real evidence of Ivy’s existence. She realized that now. Only carefully arranged suggestions and a frightened little girl desperate to make sense of them.

She crossed to the window and touched the cool glass.

“Ivy was never here,” she whispered. “Ivy never existed.” The words didn’t hurt the way they once had.

Something clicked behind her.

Elise turned. The door remained open. Nothing moved in the hall. Another sound followed. Soft. Musical. A few fragile notes drifted through the corridor.

Elise’s breath caught. The music box. The one at her apartment. Impossible. The tune came again. Three notes. A pause. Then three more. They were coming from her father’s study downstairs.

Elise stepped into the hall. “Hello?” No answer. “Mason?” When the only sound was the music box playing, she reached for her phone. There wasn’t a signal.

That couldn’t be right. She’d had service only minutes earlier.

Someone deliberately blocked it.

The music continued. Elise moved toward the staircase.

She descended slowly. The foyer was empty. The front door was locked.

Through the beveled glass, Elise looked for Mason but didn’t see him. She picked up the fireplace poker and crossed toward the study. Not because the sound controlled her. Because she was done running from it.

The music stopped. She pushed open the door.

The room looked exactly as it had when Reid left. Except for the leather notebook lying in the center of the desk. It hadn’t been there before.

Elise remained in the doorway. Every nerve in her body warned her not to enter. Warned her that Nathan had somehow used some type of diversion to make it past the deputies.

She hesitated only a moment longer before she crossed the threshold into the room with the poker clutched tight.

The notebook was old, its leather cover was worn smooth at the corners.

She stopped several feet away and looked around the space, knowing he was here somewhere. “Where are you?”

No answer.

She moved closer and opened the cover, still holding the poker. Thomas’s handwriting filled the first page.

Only one memory remains.

She turned the page. It was blank. The next page was blank as well.

Then the study door closed behind her. Elise spun hoping to find the deputies.

A man stood with one hand resting on the brass knob.

Nathan Hale.

He was older than the photograph in the employment file. His dark hair had thinned and turned gray at the temples. Lines marked the corners of his eyes and mouth.

But the eyes hadn’t changed. Quiet. Observant.

The man smiled. “You’ve done remarkably well.”

Elise’s heart pounded, but she refused to step back. “Open the door.”

“In a moment.”

“There are deputies outside.” She raised the poker in a defensive move.

“I know.” He wasn’t worried, though.

“Reid will be back soon.”

“I know that too.”

His calmness frightened her more than a weapon would have.

Nathan wore a dark raincoat over a gray sweater and black trousers. No mask. No gloves. Nothing to suggest he feared being identified.

“You’ve been here the entire time I’ve been back,” she said.

“Not the entire time.”

“You left the recorder and searched the house.”

“I returned several things that belonged here,” he said as if explaining the weather.

“The blue ribbon?”

His smile deepened. “I hoped it would help.”

“Oh, it did.”

Satisfaction flickered across his face. “Your father always believed the correct stimulus could unlock even the most deeply buried memory.”

“My father was wrong.”

Nathan’s smile slipped slightly. “Thomas was misunderstood.”

“He abused me.”

He shook his head. “He treated you.”

“He created a person who didn’t exist.”

“He revealed a person you were afraid to acknowledge.”

“I wasn’t Ivy. Ivy was never real.”

Something changed in Nathan’s eyes. Not anger. Disappointment. “You’ve allowed Reid Carver to influence you.”

“No. Reid helped me see what my father did to me.”

“Jim Carver interfered too.”

The mention of Reid’s father sent her fear skyrocketing. “What happened to Jim?”

Nathan tilted his head. “Thomas underestimated him.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

Nathan released the doorknob and moved farther into the room.

Elise stepped back so that the desk remained between them. “You killed him?”

“No.” The answer came without hesitation. “Frank Dugan ensured Jim’s investigation went nowhere. His death was unfortunate, but it had nothing to do with us.”

“Us?” she latched onto the word.

“Your father and me.” The words held an intimacy Nathan didn’t seem to recognize. “He was like a father to me. The one that you didn’t appreciate.”

It sickened her that Nathan considered himself her father’s son. Still, she had to keep him talking. Had to know everything. “You vanished when Thomas lost his license.”

“I stepped away.”

“You changed your name.”

“Names are useful only when they serve a purpose.”

“Who are you now?”

Nathan smiled faintly. “That doesn’t matter.”

“It will when the police arrest you.”

He sighed, almost sadly. “You think I’m a criminal?”

“You broke into my house. Stalked me. Manipulated evidence.”

“I guided you,” he stressed. “That’s different.”

“No, you terrorized me.”

“I helped you remember.”

Elise kept her voice steady. “You’re still doing exactly what Thomas trained you to do. Taking someone’s fear and telling them what it means.”

Nathan’s smile disappeared. For the first time, she saw the emptiness beneath his calm exterior. “You don’t understand what he accomplished.”

“He destroyed people.”

“No! He proved that identity is not fixed. Memory can be reshaped. Trauma can be given form and separated from the self.”

“By creating Ivy.”

“By giving your fear a voice,” he insisted.

“My fear already had a voice. It was mine.”

Nathan’s mouth thinned.

Elise continued before he could respond. “Thomas couldn’t accept that I was a frightened child reacting to what he was doing. He needed me to become proof of his theory.”

“You were proof.”

“I was his daughter.” Thomas had never treated her like one.

Nathan stared at her as though she’d spoken a language he couldn’t understand. “He believed you were extraordinary.”

“He believed he owned me.”

Nathan ignored the comment. His gaze shifted to the notebook. “There is one memory you haven’t recovered.”

“What memory?” she asked despite not being sure she wanted to know.

“The beginning.”

“I remember enough,” she said in disgust.

“No. You remember fragments. Thomas’s questions. The ribbons. The chair. But not why Ivy first appeared.”

“She didn’t appear. He invented her.”

“He named what was already there.”

Elise looked toward the closed door. “How did you get inside?”

“The house has more entrances than your Reid discovered.”

“The passage.”

“That’s only part of it. You and he missed the other room. The special one. Thomas hid it well.”

He was telling her there was another room that she didn’t know about. The thought of what might be hidden there was terrifying.

A faint sound came from outside. A deputy’s radio.

Close enough to remind Elise she wasn’t alone. She raised her voice to yell for Mason. Nathan moved faster than she expected and clamped a hand over her mouth killing the scream. He seized her wrist holding the poker with the other hand. The poker fell from her grasp. Nathan pulled her against the desk. Pain shot through her arm. “You don’t need them,” he hissed.

“Let go of me.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Then release me.”

His grip loosened slightly but didn’t disappear. “Your father prepared a final session before Rachel took you away. Everything was ready.” His eyes brightened. “I’ve designed it exactly as it should be.”

Revulsion turned Elise’s stomach. “Where’ve you been all these years?”

“Around. Watching. I came back here after your father died. I knew I had to preserve his legacy. That you would sell it the moment you got the chance. And I had to prepare this room for the moment you were ready to know the truth.”

“I’ll never be ready to become Ivy.”

“That isn’t what the session is for.”

“Then what?”

Nathan leaned closer. “To prove she was always real.”

A sudden pounding sounded at the front door.

“Elise?” Mason called. “Everything all right?”

Nathan’s grip tightened. “Answer him.”

She stared at him.

“Tell him you’re fine.”

“No.”

He reached beneath his coat. Elise braced herself for a gun. Instead, he drew out a small black device. A remote of some type. His thumb rested over the button.

“I’ve already disabled the cameras,” he said. “I can disable more than that.”

“What does that mean?” she asked in horror.

“I rigged the old wiring in the basement. If I press this button, a  fire will race through the walls. By the time the deputies realize what's happening it will have spread throughout the house.”

“You’d destroy Thomas’s house?”

Pain flashed across Nathan’s face. “If necessary.”

Mason knocked again.

“Elise?”

She looked toward the door. If she called out, Nathan might be bluffing. Or he might burn Coldwater Hollow with them inside.

“I’m fine,” she told him. “I dropped something.”

A pause followed. “You sure?”

“Yes.”

Nathan nodded his approval. The gesture made her skin crawl. “Good.” He released her wrist. “Now come with me.”

He moved to the bookshelves and pushed the latch. Cold air rose from the darkness beyond. The hidden passage.

A memory struck her. She was small again, slipping through the opening with one hand pressed against the stone wall. Nathan walked behind her while Thomas waited somewhere below. She couldn’t remember what had happened once they reached him, but she remembered the passage now, and the terror of knowing she wasn’t allowed to turn back.

Elise didn’t move. “You can’t make me believe his lies.”

Nathan held out his hand. “I don’t need to make you believe anything.”

“Then why am I here?”

“Because you came back.”

“No. I came back because Thomas died.”

Nathan’s eyes held hers. “You came back because part of you has always known the work wasn’t finished.”

Elise thought of Reid. He would return soon and find the notebook. He would know she hadn’t left willingly. Unless Nathan destroyed the evidence.

She glanced toward the open passage. The tunnel inside the house that led to the final answers. All because of a man who had spent twenty-four years waiting to control her again.

Elise lifted her chin. “You first.”

Nathan’s smile returned as if he were proud that she’d given the correct response.

He stepped into the passage. Elise followed.

The moment she crossed the threshold Nathan reached behind her and pulled the door closed. Darkness surrounded her.

Nathan turned on a flashlight. “Come along, Elise.” His voice echoed through the stone passage. “Your father left us so little time.”

When he reached a shelf against the wall, he moved it. A door appeared in the light. Nathan opened it.

Once they were inside, Nathan did his best to put the shelf back into place before he closed the door.

“Let’s go.” He led the way down a long winding staircase that led to another set of passages no one knew about. Elise memorized every turn they made. She kept going instead of running away, not because she believed Nathan or because she intended to become Ivy, but because Reid would come for her.

And when he did, Elise intended to make certain Nathan’s final session became the moment her father’s lies ended forever.

Chapter Twenty-One

Remember Me

Reid knew something was wrong before he reached the front door. Mason and Clark were hurrying up the drive from the direction of the gate, both men tense and alert.

“Where’s Elise?” Reid asked.

“Inside,” Mason said. “I told her to stay upstairs and lock herself in the bedroom.”

Reid’s unease deepened. “Why did you leave her?”

Mason’s expression tightened. “The dark pickup came through the gate. It stopped beyond the curve long enough to draw us down the drive, then took off before we reached it. By the time we made it to the road, the driver was gone.”

“It was a diversion,” Reid said.

Reid had called Elise three times on the drive back from the sheriff’s office without an answer. Cell service around Coldwater Hollow remained unreliable, especially during bad weather. But Elise knew he was bringing information connected to his father. She would have answered.

He tried the front door. Still locked.

“Something’s wrong.” Reid stepped back and slammed his shoulder against the door. The frame groaned but held. It took two more attempts before the lock tore free and the door swung inward.

“Elise?” he called as soon as he crossed the threshold.

Silence answered.

Mason followed behind him. “Clark is checking the rear grounds.”

Reid moved toward the study. The room was empty. Reid saw the notebook. Open on the desk. He crossed quickly.

One memory remains.

His heartrate accelerated. “Elise didn’t leave that there.”

Mason moved closer. “What is it?”

“A message.” Reid scanned the room. He noticed the discarded fireplace poker and immediately crossed to the bookshelves. He pressed the latch. The panel opened. Reid drew his weapon.

“Radio Ben. Tell him to bring everyone we have. Get Clark back here.”

“Shouldn’t we wait for backup?”

“No.”

“Reid—”

“Elise is down there.” He stepped into the passage and clicked on his flashlight.

Mason radioed the message before he followed.

Reid moved quickly, forcing himself not to run. At the first shelf he stopped when he realized it had been moved away from the wall.

He shoved it aside to reveal a door and quickly opened it.

When they reached the bottom of the stairs there were three tunnels branching away.

“Which one?” Mason whispered.

Reid studied the floor. Two sets of footprints marked the center passage. “This way.”

They headed down it. The tunnel turned twice before opening into a narrow storage room filled with medical equipment, old file cabinets.

Reid swept the beam of his flashlight across the labels.

Warren Research. Session Recordings. E.W.

His jaw ticked. Thomas hadn’t merely conducted experiments here. Someone had preserved them.

A sound echoed from farther down. A man’s voice. Reid raised one hand, signaling Mason to stop. They listened. The voice came again.

“You’re resisting because you’re afraid.” This had to be Nathan.

Reid moved carefully toward the sound. Ahead, a metal door stood partly open. Warm light spilled through the gap. He edged closer and looked inside.

Elise was in a wooden chair near the center of the underground chamber she didn’t remember. Blue ribbon bound one wrist to the armrest.

Nathan stood several feet in front of her, holding a leather notebook. A cassette recorder on a table beside him. The room had been arranged like a clinical office. Two chairs. A desk. A standing lamp. A child’s music box.

On the far wall, photographs of Elise at different ages had been pinned in careful rows. Some were labeled Elise. Others were labeled Ivy.

Reid’s anger burned fiercely. He forced his breathing to remain steady as he assessed the situation. Nathan appeared older than the personnel photograph, but Reid recognized him.

He resembled a professor conducting a lecture. Not a man holding a woman against her will.

“Tell me what you remember,” Nathan said.

Elise stared back at him. “I remember my father hurting me.”

Nathan appeared disappointed. “Thomas challenged you.”

“He confused me.”

“He separated fear from identity.”

“He taught me not to trust myself.”

“No,” Nathan raised his voice in anger. “You were gifted. Your mind created Ivy because you needed her.”

“My father created Ivy because he needed proof.”

Nathan lowered the notebook. “You still don’t understand.”

“I understand perfectly.” Elise’s voice remained steady.

Reid’s fear eased a fraction. She was trying to get the final answers.

Nathan moved to the table and switched on the cassette recorder and pushed play. Thomas Warren’s voice filled the room.

“Who are you today?”

A child answered in a soft voice. “Elise.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

A pause followed. Then Nathan’s younger voice. “Try again.”

Reid saw Elise flinch.

Nathan noticed too. “There,” he said. “You do remember.”

“I remember you helping him.”

“I believed in the work. He was brilliant.”

“He was cruel.”

Nathan stopped the tape. “You always reduce him to that.”

“Because that’s what he was.”

“He gave your suffering meaning.”

“No.” She sat forward. “He used it to make himself important.”

Nathan’s face changed. The calm facade cracked, revealing something wounded and desperate beneath it. “You sound like Rachel.”

“My mother saw him clearly.”

“Rachel was weak.”

Elise shook her head. “She saved me from him and you.”

“She stole you before the work was complete.”

Reid eased closer to the doorway. Mason stood behind him, waiting for the command to breach.

Nathan held no visible weapon. But a black remote rested on the table beside the recorder. He couldn’t risk rushing in until he understood what the remote controlled.

Elise glanced toward the doorway. Her eyes met Reid’s. She didn’t react but she knew he was there.

Reid lifted one finger to his lips.

Nathan turned back to the photographs. “Thomas believed the final session would integrate Ivy to you permanently.”

Elise’s face paled. “Not remove her?”

“No.” Nathan sounded almost offended. “Why would he remove his greatest achievement?”

Thomas had never intended to heal Elise. He had planned to make the false identity permanent.

Nathan picked up one of the photographs. It showed Elise seated beside the empty chair. “The world would have recognized what he accomplished.”

“He would have destroyed me,” Elise snapped.

“He would have changed the understanding of human identity.”

“At the cost of his own child.” The pain in those words was clear.

Nathan looked at her. Something almost tender entered his expression. “He didn’t see you as only his child.”

“I know.”

The simplicity of her answer unsettled him.

Elise leaned forward as far as the ribbon allowed. “That was his failure.”

Nathan’s fingers clenched around the photograph.

“He saw me as a theory,” she continued. “A case study. A chance to prove he was smarter than everyone who questioned him.”

“He was smarter,” Nathan yelled.

“Then why did he lose his license?”

Nathan’s eyes flashed. “Because people fear what they don’t understand.”

“No, because my mother exposed him.”

“Rachel exaggerated,” Nathan said in disgust.

“Jim Carver believed her.”

Reid’s shoulders tightened at the mention of his father.

“Carver interfered.”

Elise continued to keep Nathan talking. “You bribed Frank Dugan to bury the investigation.”

Nathan’s silence answered.

Reid felt Mason shift behind him.

There it was. The admission they needed.

Elise saw it too and pressed on. “The money came from you.”

Nathan set the photograph down. “Thomas had already sacrificed too much.”

“So, you paid Dugan.”

“I protected the work,” he said as if it made perfect sense.

“And after Thomas died?”

Nathan’s expression became solemn. “I protected his legacy.”

“You stalked me.”

“I watched over you for Thomas.”

“You broke into Coldwater Hollow.” She continued to get the answers they needed from Nathan without him even realizing it.

“I returned what belonged here.”

She shook her head. “You left the recordings.”

“You needed guidance.”

“You tried to frighten me into remembering.”

Nathan smiled. “Fear is often the most direct path.”

“That’s something Thomas taught you.”

“He taught me everything.” The words held more emotion than anything else Nathan had said.

Elise studied him for a long moment before something appeared to dawn. “You loved him.”

Nathan froze.

“You wanted to be his child,” Elise said quietly. “Did you think destroying me would make that happen?”

Nathan’s hand moved toward the remote.

Reid tensed.

Elise continued. “That’s what Jim Carver couldn’t understand.”

“Stop!” Nathan yelled.

“Thomas treated you as his minion.”

“I said stop.”

“Instead of the son you actually were.”

The room filled with silence.

“How…did you know?” Nathan asked in a broken tone.

Elise appeared as shocked as Nathan. “I didn’t. Not until just now.”

Nathan turned away. For the first time, his carefully controlled posture faltered. “My mother worked at the clinic,” he said. “Thomas was already married to your mother when I was born.”

“He never publicly acknowledged you,” she said quietly.

“He protected me. He gave me an education. A purpose.”

“He made you spend your life chasing his approval.”

Nathan spun back toward her. “You know nothing about my relationship with him.”

“I know exactly what he did to people who loved him.”

The statement silenced him.

Elise’s voice softened. “He used my mother’s fear. My trust. And he used your need to be acknowledged as his son. All for his selfish purposes.”

Nathan’s breathing grew uneven.

Reid saw the remote tremble in his hand.

“Nathan,” Elise said. “Put it down.”

“You think you can analyze me?” he snapped. “You think because you became a counselor you understand suffering?”

“No, but I understand what it’s like to spend years believing Thomas Warren’s lies.”

“They weren’t lies.”

“Ivy was,” she said gently.

Nathan moved toward her. “Ivy was real.”

“No.”

“Say her name.”

Elise straightened. “My name is Elise Warren.”

“Say it.”

“I was never Ivy.”

Nathan’s expression twisted. He switched on the recorder again.

Thomas’s voice returned. “Who are you today?”

Nathan spoke over it. “Answer him.”

Elise stared directly at him in shock. “My name is Elise Warren.”

“Wrong. That’s wrong.”

“My father abused me.”

“Stop.”

“And you, my half-brother, helped him.”

“Stop, I said!”

“But neither of you erased me,” she said and squared her shoulders.

Nathan struck the recorder from the table. It shattered against the stone floor. His hand tightened around the remote.

Reid stepped into the room. “Drop it.”

Nathan turned. Shock crossed his face.

Reid aimed his weapon at the center of Nathan’s chest. “It’s over.”

Nathan backed toward Elise. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I’m exactly where I need to be.”

Mason entered behind Reid with his weapon drawn.

Nathan lifted the remote. “Take another step and this house burns.”

Reid stopped. “Nathan, you’re trying to preserve a dead man’s failures.”

Nathan’s eyes flashed anger. “You sound like your father.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Jim Carver ruined everything!” he spat out.

“No. He started the investigation you were too afraid to face. If Thomas was doing such an amazing thing, why did he hide the truth? Why did he hide you?”

Nathan glanced toward Elise. That split second was enough. She tore her bound wrist upward. The old ribbon ripped. She lunged from the chair and struck Nathan’s arm.

The remote flew from his hand.

Reid crossed the distance between them.

Nathan swung wildly.

Reid blocked the blow and drove him backward into the table.

Nathan grabbed a metal lamp and raised it.

Mason tackled him from the side. They crashed to the floor. The lamp shattered.

Nathan struggled with surprising strength, his calm exterior gone. “You don’t understand!” he shouted. “He chose me!”

Mason pinned one arm. Reid forced the other behind Nathan’s back and locked the handcuffs into place.

Nathan twisted toward Elise. “Ivy!”

She stood beside the chair, one wrist marked red by the ribbon. Her expression held no fear. “My name is Elise.”

Nathan went still. The words seemed to empty the fight from him.

Mason pulled him upright. Ben and two more deputies arrived moments later, filling the underground room with voices and movement.

Reid barely noticed. He crossed to Elise. “Are you hurt?”

“My wrist.”

He examined it gently. The skin was bruised but not broken.

Her voice shook now that the danger had passed. “He wanted me to remember.”

Reid drew her into his arms. For one suspended moment, she held herself rigid for a breath before all the strength left her.

She pressed her face against his chest and clung to him. “I knew you’d come.”

“Always.”

He felt her breath catch.

Across the room, deputies led Nathan toward the tunnel.

He looked back once. Not at Elise. At the shattered recorder and Thomas’s photographs. At the ruins of the legacy he had sacrificed everything to protect. Then he disappeared into the passage.

Reid reached inside his jacket and removed the envelope Ben had found beneath his father’s desk. The seal had been cut carefully along one edge.

“What is this?” Elise asked.

“My father’s notes about Thomas.” Reid removed several folded pages. “He documented the complaints made against your father, the visits he made to Coldwater Hollow, and every time Frank Dugan refused to investigate.”

Ben held up a faded photograph of Thomas standing outside the hospital beside a much younger Nathan Hale. “Jim identified Nathan as Thomas’s assistant. He believed Nathan was helping Thomas conduct unauthorized sessions after Thomas lost his license.”

“Did he know Dugan had been paid?” Elise asked.

“He suspected it,” Reid said. “There’s a note here saying Dugan’s behavior changed after a private meeting with Thomas. Dad planned to examine Dugan’s finances, but he died before he could follow through.”

Elise looked at the pages Jim Carver had hidden all those years ago. “Your father never stopped trying to expose them.”

Emotion tightened Reid’s throat. “No. He didn’t.”

Elise slowly stepped away from Reid. She glanced around the room at the chair. The blue ribbon. Photographs split between two names.

She went over to the wall. Reid stayed close. One by one, she removed the pictures labeled Ivy. Beneath each was another image of Elise. Not two children. One child. One survivor.

She gathered the photographs in her hands. “This is where he tried to split me into two people.”

Reid looked around the chamber Thomas had built to prove his theory. “No.”

Elise turned to him.

“This is where you proved he couldn’t.”

She studied the pictures once more. For years, she’d lived in fear of what lay hidden in her memories. When she remembered Ivy, Elise had been so certain the little girl was real. But Ivy had never been another child trapped somewhere in the past. She had been a lie built around Elise’s pain.

And perhaps something more. A name a frightened little girl had given to the part of herself that endured.

Ben returned to the chamber, slipping his phone into his pocket. “They found the truck. It belongs to Calvin Rusk, one of your father’s former groundskeepers. State police arrested him twenty miles south of Coldwater. He’s confessed to helping for money” He shook his head. “Nathan paid him to maintain the swing, keep the passages accessible, and move things in and out of the house. Rusk drove the truck, chained the gate, cut the power, and created the diversions.”

“While Nathan planted the memories,” she said.

Reid nodded. “Rusk knew the property. Nathan knew how to manipulate you. They needed each other.”

Elise looked toward the tunnel where the deputies had taken Nathan. “And neither one of them will ever control this house or me again.”

Elise brought the photographs with her to the door. Behind her, Thomas Warren’s final session remained unfinished. Ahead waited Reid. Soon, her mother. The truth.

And a life that belonged entirely to her.

Epilogue

Three weeks later, sunlight filled the gardens at Coldwater Hollow. The morning was cool but clear, the kind of early autumn day that held the promise of change in every breath. Rain had washed the dust from the leaves, and the woods beyond the property glowed with the first hints of gold and red.

Elise stood beneath the old maple tree at the edge of the garden, holding the final blue ribbon in her hand.

It was only a faded piece of ribbon now, frayed at one end and ordinary in every other way.

For most of her life, the sight of that color had stirred something nameless inside her. Fear. Confusion. Now she understood why. The ribbon had been one of the tools her father used during their sessions. A signal that Elise was supposed to retreat and Ivy was expected to appear.

But there had never been another little girl. No sister hidden inside Coldwater Hollow. No terrible event Elise had buried because it was too painful to remember. There had only been an anxious, impressionable child whose father decided her ordinary fears were evidence of something darker.

When Elise began suffering from nightmares, Rachel had reluctantly agreed to let Thomas treat her. He was Elise’s father and a respected psychiatrist. Rachel believed he wanted to help their daughter. She hadn’t understood that Thomas had already chosen the outcome of his experiment.

Through leading questions, isolation, repetition, and carefully staged discoveries, Thomas gave Elise memories that had never belonged to her. He told her about Ivy until Elise believed another child had lived inside the house. Then he conditioned Elise to become Ivy whenever the sessions grew frightening. Thomas hadn’t uncovered a fractured identity. He had created one.

Nathan had helped him. Watching Thomas devote endless hours to Elise. Thomas’s attention had been cold and clinical, but Nathan had mistaken obsession with affection. He wanted what he believed Elise possessed. The place at Thomas’s side that Nathan thought should have belonged to his son.

Even after Thomas died, Nathan’s jealousy endured. When Elise returned to Coldwater Hollow, he revived the lies Thomas had planted. He moved objects, left ribbons, altered records, and recreated fragments of the false memories, hoping to convince Elise and everyone around her that she was losing her mind. If he could have her committed, he could erase her from Thomas’s legacy and become the only child who mattered.

Rachel had eventually discovered that Nathan was Thomas’s son and that Thomas had involved him in the sessions. She tried to end the experiment and take Elise away.

Her father had made her believe there was something wrong with her only there wasn’t. She’d been a normal little girl who occasionally had nightmares, probably due to living in an old mansion.

Elise closed her fingers around the ribbon. For years, she had believed something terrible had happened to Ivy. The truth was worse in a different way. Ivy had never needed saving.

Elise had.

Footsteps sounded behind her. Rachel approached slowly along the garden path.

Her mother had returned from Europe the morning after Nathan’s arrest. She had arrived pale and exhausted, carrying a single suitcase and more guilt than any person should have been forced to bear.

They had talked for hours. Then again the next day. And the day after that.

Some conversations ended in tears. Others in silence. A few had brought laughter neither of them expected.

Healing, Elise had learned, rarely came all at once. It came in pieces. A truth spoken. An apology accepted. A memory placed where it belonged.

Rachel stopped beside her. “You found another one.”

Elise held up the ribbon. “It was inside the music box.”

Rachel’s face tightened. “I thought the police had taken everything.”

“They missed this.”

“Do you want them to have it?”

“No.” Elise looked toward the small hole she had dug beneath the maple tree.

The police had already collected dozens of records from the underground chamber. Thomas’s journals. Session tapes. Patient files. Photographs. Every piece of evidence Nathan had preserved in the hope of vindicating the man he worshipped.

Elise hadn’t been Thomas’s only subject. Years before he began experimenting on her, he had used suggestion and hypnosis on other troubled children, convincing some that they had endured traumas that had never occurred. Several had spent years struggling to distinguish real memories from the ones Thomas planted.

But Elise had been different. She was the only child over whom he’d possessed complete access and control. With her, he had taken his theories further, attempting to create an entirely separate identity instead of merely implanting a false memory. Ivy had been the culmination of his work.

Nathan had known about the other children. Yet instead of recognizing their suffering, he had viewed them and Elise as proof of Thomas’s brilliance.

Instead, the records had exposed decades of abuse.

Nathan had confessed to bribing Frank Dugan after investigators confronted him with the financial records and Jim Carver’s notes. He had also admitted to breaking into Coldwater Hollow, leaving the recordings, and manipulating Elise’s return.

He had not admitted remorse. Perhaps he never would. But he would stand trial.

Thomas Warren’s legacy would no longer be protected by silence.

Rachel watched Elise turn the ribbon over in her hand. “You don’t have to bury it.”

“I know.”

“You could burn it.”

“I thought about that.” Elise glanced sideways at her mother.

“Then why this?”

Elise lowered herself beside the hole. “Because I don’t want to destroy every part of what happened.”

Rachel sat on the stone bench nearby. “Why not?”

“Because forgetting was what Thomas wanted.” Elise placed the ribbon in the earth. “He wanted to decide which memories belonged to me and what they meant. I’m done letting him do that.”

She picked up a handful of soil. “I remember the ribbon.” The dirt slipped through her fingers. “I remember the chair.” Another handful. “I remember Nathan telling me to answer as Ivy.” She covered the last trace of blue. “But I also remember you taking my hand and walking me out of this house.”

Rachel’s eyes filled with tears. “I should have done it sooner.”

“You did it when you could.”

“That doesn’t feel like enough.”

“Maybe it never will.” Elise rose and brushed the dirt from her palms. “But it saved me.”

Rachel looked down, struggling to contain her emotion.

Elise crossed to her and took her hand. For years, she had viewed her mother’s silence as abandonment. Now she understood it had been fear. Not the kind Elise would have chosen. Or the kind that had protected her from every hurt. But human fear.

Rachel had made mistakes. So had Elise. They would have to find their way forward without pretending otherwise.

A vehicle approached along the drive.

Elise glanced back to the house. “That will be the realtor.”

“Are you sure about selling?” Rachel asked.

Elise looked at Coldwater Hollow. The dark windows no longer seemed watchful. The towering roofline no longer felt like a warning. Without Thomas’s secrets pressing against every wall, the house was only brick, stone, and timber.

Still, she didn’t want it. “I’m sure.”

Daniel Harlow had finally delivered the will and turned his entire estate file over to investigators. They’d found no connection between him and Nathan. The will explicitly left Coldwater Hollow to Elise, and Harlow was handling the remaining probate requirements so she could place the property on the market.

“What if a buyer tears it down?”

“Then they tear it down.”

“And if they restore it?”

“Then maybe it becomes something better than it was.”

Rachel smiled faintly. “That sounds like something a grief counselor would say.”

“Occupational hazard.”

The vehicle stopped near the front steps, but no realtor emerged. Instead, Reid climbed out. Elise’s heart lifted before she could stop it. He had returned to duty the week after Nathan and Calvin’s arrests, though he found reasons to stop at Coldwater Hollow almost every day.

Sometimes he brought case updates. Sometimes coffee. Once, he had claimed he needed to inspect a broken lock that had already been repaired.

Elise hadn’t pointed that out.

Rachel rose. “I think I’ll give you two some privacy.”

“You don’t have to leave.”

“I know.” Her mother squeezed her hand before heading toward the house.

Reid met her halfway across the lawn. They exchanged a few quiet words, and Rachel glanced back at Elise with a smile before continuing inside.

Reid approached the maple tree. “You buried it.”

Elise looked at the patch of freshly turned soil. “The last ribbon.”

“How does it feel?”

“Quieter.”

“That’s good.”

“I think so.”

He stood beside her, close enough for their shoulders to almost touch. “The district attorney called.”

“What did she say?”

“Calvin will get a lesser sentence for cooperating. Nathan’s attorney is discussing a plea.”

Elise absorbed the news. “Will he take it?”

“Hard to say.”

“And what about the cases Dugan handled?”

“The state is reviewing every case from his final years in office.”

“At least the truth is coming out.”

“It is.”

Reid glanced up at the house. “Ben found something else in my father’s box.”

Elise turned. “What?”

“A letter.”

“From Jim?”

He nodded. “He wrote it after the investigation was shut down. It was addressed to whoever reopened the case.”

“What did it say?”

Reid withdrew a folded sheet of paper from his jacket. The creases were worn, as though he had opened and closed it many times. He handed it to her.

Elise read the short message. “If you are reading this, then I failed to finish what I started. Rachel Warren is telling the truth. Her daughter needs someone to believe her, even if she cannot explain what happened. Thomas Warren is dangerous, but I don’t believe he is working alone. Don’t let silence become the final answer.”

Elise read the final sentence twice. Then she looked at Reid. “Your father believed us.”

“He did,” he said quietly.

“I wish I could have thanked him.”

Reid’s expression softened. “I think finishing what he started was thanks enough.”

She folded the letter carefully and returned it. For a moment, neither spoke.

Bird songs drifted from the woods. Somewhere near the house, Rachel greeted the realtor who had finally arrived in a second car. Life continued around them. Not untouched. But moving.

“I’ve been thinking about what comes next,” Elise said.

Reid’s gaze remained on her. “And?”

“I’m going back to Portland for a while.”

Something flickered across his face, quickly hidden. “What will you do?”

“Stay with my mother. She asked me to. I think we both need some time together. We still have a lot to sort through.”

“I agree. And that sounds nice.”

“It does.” Elise hesitated. “I won’t stay in Portland forever.”

Reid didn’t look away. “No?”

“I don’t know where I’ll end up.” She smiled slightly. “But I know I don’t want distance to make that decision for me.”

Understanding entered his eyes. “Elise—”

“I’m not asking for promises.”

“Good, because I’m terrible at speeches.”

She laughed. “I noticed.”

He gave her an offended look.

She laughed again. The sound surprised her. Not because she had forgotten how. Because laughter felt natural here now. At Coldwater Hollow.

In the place where Thomas had tried to teach her that fear was the truest thing about her.

Reid reached for her hand. “I can make one promise.”

“What’s that?” she asked and believed she knew what he would say.

“I’m not going anywhere unless you tell me to.”

Her fingers closed around his. “I don’t think I’m going to tell you that.”

“Good.” He lifted her hand and pressed a kiss against her knuckles. The tenderness of it caught at her heart.

Elise stepped closer. When he kissed her, it was gentle and brief, filled with more hope than urgency. A beginning. Nothing more was needed.

When they parted, Reid glanced at the ground beneath the maple. “What will you put there?”

“Where?”

“Over the ribbon.”

Elise considered the question. “A flower, maybe.”

“What kind?”

“Something blue.”

He raised an eyebrow.

She smiled. “The color doesn’t belong to Thomas.”

“No,” Reid said. “It doesn’t.”

Elise looked over the gardens one final time. In the end, she hadn’t been saved by recovering every memory or uncovering every secret. She’d been saved by choosing which voices to believe. And refusing to let the people who hurt her define who she became.

Elise leaned against Reid as sunlight broke through the clouds and touched the house behind them.

Coldwater Hollow no longer held the secrets of her past.

She knew exactly who she was.

And for the first time, Elise turned away without wondering who she might be leaving behind.

About the Author

Mary Alford is a New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author who loves giving her readers the unexpected, combining unforgettable characters with unpredictable plots that result in stories the reader can’t put down. Her books have garnered several awards and nominations. Mary lives deep in the heart of Texas with her husband, two cats, and a dog.