terrible visibility, they had no way of knowing what it was he had inside the bag.
The crawling sensation faded at last.
Not entering the house until at least five more minutes had passed, he locked the door behind himself, then checked the lounge, kitchen, and spare bedroom. It didn’t take long—the place was no mansion, though, judging from their style choices, the owners had clearly considered it their castle.
The two old-fashioned rifles mounted crisscross above the mantel had been lovingly polished and dust free when Will moved in. The first thing he’d done was to pull them off and check their status. As they’d been properly decommissioned and were now nothing but decorative, he’d put them back in place. Neither had he moved the overstuffed sofa upholstered in bright orange and black stripes. It wasn’t as if he ever sat in the lounge.
The rest of the house cleared, he took the evidence with him into his bedroom. He was probably acting paranoid for a cop in a small town, but he’d been a cop in a much bigger town, and he knew that homes weren’t always safe.
Homes were where people let down their guards and invited the monsters in.
Which was why he locked his bedroom door, too, before checking to ensure his windows were locked. He wasn’t worried about himself—but he needed to take a hot shower, and he didn’t want the evidence stolen in the interim.
After stripping with quick motions, he left the bathroom door open as he stepped into the shower just long enough to warm up from the inside out. The fire at Anahera’s had done a good job of chasing out the chill, but the damp shirt he’d put back on, while distracted by a moment that shouldn’t have happened, had undone that during the drive here. Stepping out of the shower only a couple of minutes later, he looked out at his bedroom to confirm nothing had been disturbed.
No sign of an intruder.
A fast rubdown to dry himself before he pulled on a pair of faded jeans and a gray sweatshirt, then he took the evidence and a pair of disposable gloves with him into the kitchen. There, he made himself a cup of decaffeinated coffee—any more caffeine and he’d probably be wired all night.
Sitting down at his small kitchen table with a notepad, pen, and the mug of coffee on one side, he put on the gloves before emptying the plastic shopping bag. Leaving the watch in its evidence bag for now, he retrieved the tin box and looked at the rusted lock. It definitely needed a key. But Will didn’t have time to waste waiting on a locksmith and he had Matilda’s permission to open it. No court in the world would throw out any evidence he uncovered as a result.
First, however, he found his camera and took photos of everything. A small ruler from the junk drawer acted as a scale marker.
He’d continue to document as he went.
Next, he decided to grab his toolbox and see what he could do with the lock. It didn’t take much to break it. Putting it aside, where he’d eventually place it into an evidence bag, he carefully opened the lid. Then, though he wanted to immediately pick up the book on the top, he grabbed the camera instead and took several photographs of the contents.
Only once he’d documented everything in situ did he pick up the bronze-colored book he’d seen, the word Journal written in curly gold writing across the front. Someone had also pasted small heart stickers around the edges of the word.
Will ran his thumb over one of the stickers.
It was such a girly thing for a young woman as beautiful and as experienced at handling men as Miriama appeared to be; some part of her, Will realized, was still a girl. Dreaming of hearts and flowers.
Jaw hard, he checked the first page, then the last one in which she’d written something. A glance at the dates confirmed this was Miriama’s most recent journal. It appeared to span a year, beginning about six months after Miriama would’ve turned eighteen. From the amount of pages filled, it was clear she hadn’t journaled every day.
He went back to the first entry. It was a short one:
Hello, new journal. We’re going to have some wonderful adventures together. I feel it in my bones. Love, Miriama.
She hadn’t made another entry for a week. That entry was a chatty one that talked about working in Josie’s café and her