Instantly tense, she paused in the doorway and scanned the room. The jewelry stand on her dresser was in place. Her bed was made up, although the three decorative pillows she kept on top were thrown haphazardly on the bed. Not how she’d left them.
Someone had been in her room.
She visually swept it for a sign as to whom, looking for a threatening message or another warning. Then she spotted a folded piece of paper on her desk in the corner.
A paper folded into an origami swan.
Her breath caught. When she and Val were little, they loved origami. They left secret messages for each other all over the house and the yard in the intricately folded shapes. Her fingers trembled as she unfolded the swan, then her heart stuttered at the sight of her sister’s shaky handwriting.
They’re going to kill me, sis. Look below the bench in the rose garden.
Peyton went cold inside. The rose garden was where they’d found Leon’s body.
* * *
LIAM WAS WORRIED about Peyton. She’d been through a lot lately, both physically and emotionally.
He’d been a wreck when they’d hauled his father from the fire, and he’d lain there limp and pale. When the medics’ attempts to save him had failed, he’d literally been driven to his knees. The feelings of helplessness, anger and grief had overwhelmed him that night and for months afterward.
His only saving grace had been his intense need to find the person responsible.
Though he hadn’t quite figured it out, the sense that he was closing in on the truth fueled him with adrenaline. He refused to give up.
Even if he had to pressure Peyton.
Still, concern for her knotted his gut. She didn’t deserve to live in fear.
He strode to her bedroom door and knocked. “Peyton? Are you okay?”
“Just a minute.”
Was he wrong, or did her voice warble?
He stepped away from the door, then returned to the table and plugged in the flash drive with the security tape. A couple of minutes later, footsteps broke the silence, and Peyton appeared. She looked freshly showered with her wavy hair flowing around her shoulders and accentuating her heart-shaped face. The blue sweater she wore highlighted the sky blue of her eyes and made his pulse clamor with awareness.
Don’t go there, man. She’s in trouble and needs your help. Not your lustful thoughts.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“Better. The shower did me a world of good.”
She did look calmer, fresh and void of the remnants of the blood on her forehead and her tattered clothing from the night before.
“I was about to review the footage.” He pointed out the date.
“This is the night Mama said that strange man came to see her. The one who left me the copy of the drug log.” She shivered, and Liam barely resisted pulling her into his arms to console her.
The best way he could help her was to play the footage and see what was on it.
He hit the play button and a grainy tape filled his computer screen. Dammit, the quality was so poor he didn’t know if they’d find anything. But he and Peyton watched through the hours of the evening. She identified several cars that came and went as belonging to staff members.
The camera captured Peyton leaving her mother’s to go to her place. Liam tensed at the image of a shadowy figure hovering at the side of the building.
He zoomed in on the figure and enlarged it, but the footage was so blurred all he could discern was a pair of work boots and a dark coat with a hood that obliterated the body of the person inside. The figure darted through the bushes along the side of Mrs. Weiss’s cottage, veered along the gardens and up the hill toward Peyton’s.
Seconds later, a second figure in the gardens caught his eye. A smaller-framed person, hunched in a thin jacket, stooped down by the bench in the garden, head bowed.
His pulse jumped. That figure had stopped at the same spot where Leon’s body had been found.
And it was not a man’s frame. It was a woman’s.
Chapter Seventeen
The fact that the video revealed a woman near Mrs. Weiss’s place made Liam wonder if he had it wrong. Could a woman be responsible for attacking Peyton and for the attempt on her mother’s life?
“Do you recognize this person?” Liam asked.
Peyton’s face paled, and she hesitated a fraction of a second too long. Then she shook her head. “It could be one