“Don’t so quickly discount the books, Liam. Hear me out. Alan told me that Zoey had received one book per week for a month. Sam had sent them one at a time. Why? I’m thinking Zoey suspected something was going to happen to her,” Rae said. “The books. They were there before in college. They’re here now, and Zoey’s gone again. What do the books have to do with anything? Why did Sam send them? What does she know that she’s not telling me?”
Liam chewed on a piece of corn bread. “So how can we find out more?” he asked.
Good. At least he was willing to listen to her about the books. Rae hopped off the stool, moved to the coatrack, and then tugged the novel from her oversized pocket. She made her way back to the kitchen and held up the book. The cover featured a scuba diver in a bright blue sea. “I just happen to have gotten my hands on one. Lost Gold by Zane Williams.”
“Did you buy it?”
“No. I snagged it from Sam’s bookshelf. She shut down on me before I could ask. I’ll return it, but if she isn’t willing to be forthcoming, then I feel like it’s okay that I borrowed the book from her.”
“What about fingerprints? You’re getting yours all over it.”
“Sam has more on her shelf. I need to see what this is about. And I’d like to talk to Ivan more too.”
“When are you going to do all this? You have a job at the resort to see if you can find any suspicious activity there, remember?”
“Right. I’m only working part-time, remember?” She skimmed through a few pages of Lost Gold.
Liam swallowed a spoonful of stew. “Okay. I admit that I may have been wrong about the books, and you could be onto something. Why does Sam have the books that Zoey kept in college? Why did Zoey suddenly want the books sent back to her?”
“And why these books? I mean, why Zane Williams? Is there some significance to the author, the titles, or the series?”
Liam had that uncertain look in his eyes again.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
He frowned. “While there could be something to find here, I’d like to have something real to go on. This feels like we’re sticking our hands in a sandbox, lifting them out only to have the sand pouring through our fingers because everything is circumstantial. Loose connections that slide through our fingers because there’s nothing hard to grab on to. And your thoughts on the books seem very loose, if you ask me.”
Why couldn’t he see what she saw? She tamped down her disappointment. Rae wouldn’t be deterred. “We keep digging in that sandbox then until we grab on to something solid.” She turned her attention to her laptop and did a web search for Zane Williams. Once she found him, she said, “He writes thriller novels mostly about underwater shipwrecks. Treasure. That sort of thing.”
Liam’s cell rang. He glanced at the screen and frowned. “Excuse me.” He rose from the table and left her there with Evelyn.
“He’s such an intense man,” Evelyn said. “But he has a heart of gold.”
Rae had seen that heart of gold. She’d shattered it all by herself. Did Evelyn know that story? Rae didn’t feel like revealing too much of the past.
Evelyn got up and started clearing the dishes, so Rae did as well.
“The two of us can work faster.” Rae helped Evelyn finish up the dishes. Sometimes a mundane task would spark ideas as her brain continued to work.
And she got one.
After putting the few dishes away, Rae got back on her laptop and found the news story about Simon Astor’s remains being discovered.
Air whooshed from her lungs.
Journalism 101. Check the facts. Then recheck them.
She reread the date. Forensic anthropologist Susan Geiger had assisted in identifying the remains and the cause of death. The date Simon’s remains were identified, and Enzo would have been notified, happened after Zoey’s abduction.
Rae hadn’t considered this before.
Zoey had disappeared before the body was identified. Was her disappearance even related? It had to be. There weren’t any coincidences. But this didn’t make sense.
She pressed her head into her hands. Maybe she wasn’t the person to figure this out.
Even though Dad was gone, she couldn’t help but think about him—her Pulitzer Prize–winning, war zone–journalist father. Could she ever live up to his name?