just dismissed it. I’m sorry.”
He moved forward, grabbing her hand to give it a small squeeze. “Don’t apologize, Lynne. I’m just on edge. And trust me, you weren’t the only one to dismiss my father’s ravings. The sheriff did. I did. . . .” His voice broke and he was forced to clear the lump from his throat. “Or at least, I assumed that if he truly was getting letters, they must be from someone who was trying to screw with him. What else could we think when there were never any bodies?”
“Until now.”
He started to nod, then he released his breath with a low hiss. “Christ,” he muttered, hurrying across the room and into the old-fashioned kitchen.
It was a boxy space with old wooden cabinets and a white sink that was chipped and rusting where the water had leaked for years. The fridge hummed with a sound that warned it was on its last legs, and the oven was coated in grease.
He’d tried to keep his stuff contained here and in his old bedroom, so nothing got lost among the stacks of boxes he was filling with his father’s belongings.
“Now what?” Lynne followed behind him, her expression puzzled as he reached for the wrinkled piece of paper he’d tossed on the worn dining table.
He turned the paper so she could see the letters scribbled on the front. “I was given this by Ron Bradshaw.”
She stepped closer, studying the initials. “What is it?”
It was a question that had plagued him since Bradshaw had shoved it in his hand. Last night he’d sat at the table, eating his solitary meal and trying to puzzle out what the letters could mean. They were written in the form of initials. S.H. R.D. Did they refer to names? Places? Or nonsense from a delusional man on the edge of death?
All he’d gotten for his efforts was a headache.
“I have no idea, but my father left it with the preacher to give to me after his death,” he told Lynne.
“It looks like initials.” She guessed the obvious.
He pointed a finger at the bottom letters. “Here.”
“D.R.L.G.” she read out loud. Then she lifted her head to meet his steady gaze. “Does it mean something to you?”
“Dr. Lynne Gale.”
* * *
Lynne made a sound as if she’d taken a blow to the stomach.
In fact, it felt like she’d been punched.
She’d come to this house because she’d remembered the strange phone call from Rudolf. And she honestly had been worried about Kir after he’d charged out of her clinic. But now that he was implying that those were her initials on some sort of weird list he’d been given, she found herself eager to dismiss his suggestion.
“That’s a stretch,” she argued. “It could mean anything.”
“The only way to know for certain is to find those letters.”
She bit back her protest and squared her shoulders. He was right. She hadn’t known Rudolf as well as her father. The two old men had been friends for fifty years. But she’d often stopped by to check on Rudolf ’s dog, knowing that the poor man was going to be devastated when the old hound finally died. And each time she rang the doorbell, she never knew which Rudolf would answer.
The funny, self-deprecating man with a razor-sharp memory who loved to chat. Or the bleary-eyed, drunkenly muddled man who barely recognized her.
One thing was for certain. He’d never lied to her. He might have been confused, or mistaken, but he never lied. So, assuming he hadn’t been delusional, then some nutjob had sent him letters that had terrified him enough to call her. Which meant he would have kept them. They had to be somewhere. “Where have you searched?”
“Dad’s bedroom, and I just finished his office,” he told her.
“Does he have a safety-deposit box at the bank?”
He shook his head, even as he abruptly turned toward the narrow door across the room. “He has a safe,” he said, opening the door. “Follow me.”
“Where are you going?” Lynne asked as he disappeared from view.
“The cellar. There’s an old safe down here where dad used to keep his gun locked. I think there were some personal papers in there as well,” he called out.
Lynne passed by the fridge that vibrated with enough force to make the floor shake and headed down the narrow flight of stairs to the basement. The smell of damp hit her before she reached the bottom and she hesitated on the last step.
She hated creepy, enclosed spaces. “Is there a