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No, he was here to see if he could find something that might give his career a much-needed boost.

After breakfast, he’d followed the hiking trail that led away from Mabel’s property and into the forest. He supposed he could have driven his rented SUV to a more well-known trailhead, but he liked the idea of doing the whole thing with his own two feet.

Altogether, it would be a hike of more than five miles, not counting whatever wandering around he did in the woods, but he’d done more than that in a day when he was feeling ambitious.

It would be as good a way as any other to break in his new hiking boots.

At least they were comfortable right off the bat, and he could tell he wouldn’t have to worry about any blisters or chafed spots. He’d brought along some chamois to pad the boots just in case, but it seemed clear he wouldn’t need the stuff.

While at the outdoor shop, he’d bought a map of the various trails in the area, although he planned to rely mainly on the AllTrails app on his phone. It was designed to load all the necessary information before you even set out on a hike, so loss of the cell signal wouldn’t be a problem.

Good thing, too, because when he pulled the phone out of his pack to check on the time, all the bars had disappeared. True, he’d been able to barely squeak out two in Silver Hollow proper, although that was still enough to do what he needed to do.

Just as he was about to return the phone to his backpack, he thought he spied a glimmer of something that seemed to sparkle in the undergrowth about ten yards or so from where he stood.

Immediately, his heart rate sped up in anticipation, even though he knew whatever he’d seen was far too small to be the mythical white horse from that Reddit bulletin board.

No, he thought it far more likely that some careless visitor had dropped a soda bottle or some other kind of shiny trash, although he wasn’t sure if he wanted to accept that explanation, either.

For one thing, the sunny skies from yesterday had disappeared as if they’d never been, and there wasn’t enough light here under the canopy to make something sparkle like that.

Frowning, he moved forward, phone still in his hand. He told himself that whatever he’d seen probably wouldn’t merit a photo…but what if it did?

There was that incongruous sparkle again. He hurried toward the whatever-it-was, and then stopped, not sure exactly what he was seeing.

The plant was small and delicate, resembling a lily of the valley but also different somehow, its little bells more elongated, its leaves almost swordlike.

And he knew no lily of the valley had ever sparkled like that, as if the edge of every bloom had been dipped in diamond dust.

For a moment, he only stood there and stared…until he remembered his iPhone was still in his hand.

At once, he lifted it and took a quick series of shots, followed by a video of the plant from all sides as he walked around it. The whole time, he hardly dared to breathe, as if some part of him feared that if he made too much noise, the strange bit of greenery might disappear in a puff of smoke.

Because he was trying to be so quiet, the snap of a twig behind him sounded almost as loud as shattering glass. He whirled — only to see Sidney Lowell emerging from behind a nearby fir tree, her expression simultaneously embarrassed and annoyed.

“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded.

“What does it look like?” she replied, sounding far too reasonable.

“Spying?”

“Making sure you don’t get yourself into any trouble.”

About ten different responses crowded his brain, but none of them felt like the correct one for the situation. “What kind of trouble could I even get into out here?”

Now she stepped forward. “A whole lot.”

Belatedly, he remembered that her mother and grandmother had disappeared in these very woods, so he supposed she had good reason to believe the forest wasn’t exactly the safest place in the world. “I’m fine,” he said shortly, and turned back to the plant.

Only to realize it was no longer there.

“It’s gone.”

Frowning, Sidney stepped closer. “What’s gone?”

His first impulse was to stonewall and not say anything. But since he’d made the comment already — and because it seemed as if she’d followed him out of concern and not because she made a habit of being a snoop — he thought it better to be truthful.

“This plant,” he said, and went over to his camera roll so he could pull up the video he’d just taken.

Except nothing was there, just a fuzzy gray space, like a closeup of a piece of felt or something.

What the hell?

She stood there, arms crossed, one brow lifted at a quizzical angle. “What plant?”

Annoyed, he ran his finger across the screen, hoping that one of the still images had come out better. Maybe his phone was acting up.

Every single photo he’d taken of the plant was exactly the same — gray square after gray square.

Okay, what the actual hell?

“There was a plant,” he said as he lowered his phone and pointed toward the patch of grass where he could have sworn that silvery, not-quite lily of the valley had been growing just a moment earlier. “Something I’ve never seen before. I know this is going to sound crazy, but it was…sparkling.”

For a moment, she didn’t respond. Something flickered in her clear gray eyes, although Ben didn’t know her well enough to guess what the emotion was.

Then she put on a smile that looked somehow forced and said, “Some pretty flowers grow out here, but I know they don’t sparkle.”

“Well, this one did.” What had gone wrong with his phone? He’d taken some snaps at the convention over the weekend, and it had been working just fine. Had all the damp out here in the forest somehow fogged the camera lens?

Somehow he knew that explanation, while rational enough, wasn’t the true answer. No, something else was going on here, something that all his instincts were telling him was connected to the shimmering white horse that supposedly had been spotted in these very woods.

“You know something,” he said.

Sidney’s eyes narrowed. In her pet shop, he hadn’t noticed what a clear, crystalline gray they truly were, like a reflection of the cloudy skies above.

When he’d first seen her, he’d noted how pretty she was, prettier in person than she’d appeared in that photo her father had dropped, but now he realized how creamy her skin was, how flawless.

Well, except for the faint line that appeared between her brows as she frowned at him.

“I know you can get yourself in a lot of trouble out here if you wander off the path.”

He knew that as well as she did, and under normal circumstances, he would never have left the trail unless he had a damn good reason.

Then again, a sparkling plant unknown to humankind had seemed like a pretty good reason to him.

“I wouldn’t have gotten lost,” he said calmly, and lifted his phone. “I’m using the AllTrails app.”

Now her mouth pursed in amusement. “What, on the same phone that took a bunch of pictures of gray nothing?”

Touché. “I can still see the trail from here,” he replied. “And I appreciate your concern, but I’m a big boy and can take care of myself.” He paused before adding, “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

“It’s Tuesday,” she said simply, and he stared back at her, wondering how the hell he was supposed to respond to that non sequitur.

A very faint smile touched her lips. “On Tuesdays, I don’t open the pet shop until noon. It’s sort of an exchange for being open a half day on Saturdays. Everyone knows I go hiking on Tuesday morning if the weather is at all cooperative.”

The intimation being, of course, that he couldn’t possibly know such a thing because he was a newcomer to Silver Hollow, an interloper.

Fine.

“Do you come out here because you’re still looking for clues as to what happened to your mother and grandmother?”

For what felt like an unbearably long moment, Sidney Lowell only stood there, hands planted on her hips, her face so blank that Ben could only believe she was holding it that way deliberately until she could figure out what in the world to say in response to his comment.

Apparently, she decided on nothing at all, because she turned and stalked away from him in angry silence.

That hadn’t gone well. He stood there for a second or two, and then, almost as though of their own volition, his feet began to propel him forward.

One way or another, he needed to get this straightened out.