when Keira nudged her shoulder. “It must be one in the morning by now. There’s no way Dane’s still awake.”
Keira grudgingly let it be.
As they neared the edge of the forest, something cold and wet hit Keira’s face. She wiped it off, but it was quickly followed by another drop. The rain had started. We’ll be wet before we get home. Hopefully, this won’t take long.
She stepped through a final row of trees and found herself in the fabled Crispin garden. With the moon blocked by heavy, roiling clouds, Zoe’s LED flashlight provided the only light. Its refracted beam brought a grisly maze of overgrown plants, collapsed stone seats, and upturned monuments into stark relief.
Zoe whistled, and Keira clamped a hand over her friend’s mouth. “Please. Be. Quiet.”
“But it’s so cool!” Zoe spoke through Keira’s fingers, breathing moist air onto her palm, and Keira pulled it away with a grimace.
Mason appeared at her side and bent low so she could hear his whisper. “I don’t know how true they are, but I’ve heard rumors that Dane suffers from insomnia and takes long walks during the night. You might want to make this quick.”
She nodded and turned back to Zoe. “Where was Emma killed?”
“Hmm.” Zoe raised her flashlight to scan the property, and Keira had to stop herself from forcing the beam back down to the ground. Too much light or motion could stir the house’s occupant, but on the other hand, Zoe couldn’t lead her to the cold crime scene if she was blind.
Keira tried to regulate her breathing and tell herself the chances of being caught were relatively low, but she could already feel her limbs preparing her to flee. She flexed her hands to stop the nervous energy from overflowing into irrational actions.
“I saw the photos put in as evidence,” Zoe whispered. “And I thought I could guess the scene of death based on them, but wow, a lot’s changed in forty years. Can you believe this used to be a luxury property? They had a dedicated gardener to trim the hedges and stuff. Now it’s like some postapocalyptic-scape, just with plants instead of collapsed buildings.”
The metaphor was awkward, but Keira couldn’t argue with it. As the flashlight skimmed over the yard, she saw sprawling shrubs as big as a car, flowers that had spread outside their garden beds, a stone statue of a Grecian woman with both arms lying crumbled at her feet, and a dry water fountain with decades’ worth of leaves in its basin.
“It was near the house…” Zoe chewed on her thumbnail as she muttered to herself. “There was some sort of stone structure near it. Like a wall or something. And a garden bed just beside her body.”
More drops hit Keira’s exposed skin. She squinted against the thin rain as she looked up at Crispin House. Bleak, decaying, and sad, the mansion towered above them. Lightning crackled in the distance, silhouetting the building for a fraction of a second, and Keira shivered as the thunder shook the air. “Do we need to get closer to the house?”
“Yeah.” Zoe’s smile was brave, but a hint of uncertainty glinted in her eyes. “The left side, I think.”
They moved forward as a unit. Although the garden was severely overgrown, it seemed to be frequently visited. Dirt tracks threaded between the plants and around the trees, showing where a lifetime of pacing had worn down the grass. It was all too easy to imagine Dane, alone, possibly deranged, spending his days in the wild plot.
“I think…” Zoe stopped twenty paces away from the building. She looked from the protruding wing of the house to a line of stones showing where a garden’s border had once existed, then to a young elm growing ahead of them. “I think this is it.”
Keira’s breath was quick and shallow. She tucked her flashlight back into her pocket and stepped forward.
In the mill, touching the chair Frank Crispin had stood on had shown her his death. She hoped the experience hadn’t been an abnormality and that it wasn’t tied to a physical residue such as a fingerprint that could be erased by exposure to the elements. If she was right, standing where Emma had died should show her the girl’s demise—and the killer’s identity.
“This must be it.” Wonder was audible in Zoe’s voice. She’d apparently forgotten her anxiety as she approached the tree. “They really did plant a memorial. That’s so cool.”
It’s twisted. Keira’s heart fluttered like a panicked bird as she