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A lready halfway onto the road, momentum carried Juliana into traffic and away from the two men before she even had a chance to process what she’d seen. Two stop signs later, adrenaline flooded her body—again.

Darting a look in the rearview mirror, she noted a handful of cars. Nothing struck her as out of the ordinary, although she wasn’t sure she’d be able to tell if it were. At least there were no obvious signs of Suit or Blue following her.

She took a shaky breath as it sank in that they’d been watching her. That her ruse hadn’t worked. That Suit and Blue hadn’t dismissed her. At least not entirely.

But what did they plan to do next?

Mindlessly, she followed the car in front of her as she considered that last question. Maybe they just wanted to watch her and assure themselves that she hadn’t overheard their conversation.

Or had they seen through her charade completely and had something nefarious planned for her?

Her stomach clenched at that thought. There were miles of mountain roads between San Francisco and Mystery Lake. She’d read far too many thrillers to think it a good idea to travel them if someone followed her. Which meant she needed to take an alternate route home just to be on the safe side. And if she was overthinking things, well, at least she was alone and there’d be no witnesses to her madness.

Taking a fortifying breath, she looked in her rearview again, taking closer note of the cars behind her. Then making the next right turn, she began winding her way through the streets of San Francisco toward the Golden Gate Bridge. Rather than travel straight east from the city, she’d head north, then east, then back south. The route was much longer, but the roads were wider and more heavily traveled.

By the time she reached the iconic bridge, a growing sense of irritation snaked through her. Spotting a tail was nowhere near as easy as her books made it seem. Yes, she read fiction. And yes, the heroes and heroines were smart and resourceful and strong, and, in all reality, unrealistic (wasn’t that what escapism fiction was all about??). Nevertheless, they’d given her unrealistic expectations.

Of course, it was possible she hadn’t spotted a tail because there wasn’t one. But everyone and their dog seemed to drive either a gray Tesla, a compact SUV (and no, she couldn’t tell them apart), or a generic sedan. Five people could be following her and she’d never be able to single them out. Not without reading license plates. And taking her eyes off the road long enough to do that seemed a perilous option.

She’d committed herself to a path, though, and wasn’t about to waver. Maybe she’d have more luck the farther away from the Bay Area she traveled. With less traffic, hopefully, she’d either spot a tail or confirm no one followed her.

After crossing the bay, she continued north toward Novato, then headed east on Highway 37. She didn’t put much faith in her abilities, but as she merged onto Interstate 80, she felt fairly certain no one tailed her. That didn’t mean she was safe; they could still find where she lived from her license plate. But for now, she could settle into the drive and consider what to do next.

Glancing at the clock on her dash, her stomach pitched. She still had to decide what to do about her date. Even if she wanted to keep it, her longer route home would make her thirty minutes late. If she didn’t hit traffic.

The thought of canceling didn’t sit well with her. She hadn’t been attracted to a man in the way she was to Simon in ages, if ever. She didn’t want him to think she’d lost interest. And maybe spending time not obsessing about the past few hours would help clear her head and make it easier to tackle the problem in the morning.

She rolled her eyes at that logic. She should just admit to herself that she wanted to see him. Own the decision and be okay with it. Maybe she shouldn’t allow herself to get distracted, but the situation with Suit and Blue would still be there in the morning. A few hours with Simon wouldn’t change that, but it would give her a reprieve from the intensity of the afternoon.

Bringing her Bluetooth to life, she dictated a text.

Juliana: Hi Simon, it’s Juliana. My work thing in the city ran late, and I won’t be home by seven. Fingers crossed I don’t hit any traffic, but could we push to eight?

She hoped he believed that she still wanted to see him, but she didn’t know him well enough to guess how he’d take another change to their plans. In her experience, which admittedly wasn’t vast, men did not like to make accommodations.

She jumped when her phone rang instead of chiming with a text response. Simon’s name appeared on the screen.

“Hey, Simon,” she said, trying to sound casual and not as if a swarm of butterflies fluttered across her skin.

“Hi, is everything all right?” he asked.

Unable to read his mood, she hesitated. “It’s fine. Sort of,” she said.

“Sort of?”

She cocked her head at his concerned tone, then flickered another look in her rearview mirror. The traffic had thinned since merging onto Interstate 80, and only six cars were visible behind her.

“I mentioned an event in San Francisco?—”

“I remember. A new exhibit on how immigration built the city,” he said.

She blinked in surprise. As an unabashed geek of all things history and archive-related, she never expected people to actually listen—let alone remember—when she talked about her work.

“Yeah, that one. It was great, by the way. They did an excellent job.”

“So why are things only ‘sort of’ okay?” he asked, his voice rumbling over the line. No one should sound that good over speakerphone.

She bit her lower lip as she considered her response. She had no intention of dumping her current situation on him, but she sucked at lying. She had a lot of experience with prevarication, though.

“I need to make an unexpected run through Sacramento on my way home. I’ll still be home tonight, only a little later than I thought,” she answered.

“You think you’ll be home by eight?” he asked.

“If I don’t hit any traffic.” She paused, then added, “I’d much rather be having dinner with you than driving several hours out of my way. It might not seem that way since I’ve changed plans on you twice, but I hope you believe me.”

“Why wouldn’t I believe you?” he asked, sounding genuinely confused. “If you didn’t want to go to dinner, I assume you’d tell me.”

She’d be insane not to want to spend time with him and opened her mouth to tell him, but he cut her off. “You would tell me, right?” he asked.

“I would,” she responded without hesitation. She didn’t have much experience turning men down—usually, it was the other way around. And having been on the receiving end of it so many times, she believed in the kindness of being straightforward.

“Okay, good,” he said. “That’s good,” he added on an exhale, sounding kind of adorable. “Since you might hit traffic, we could postpone tonight and do something tomorrow. I have the day off.”

He and his friends—or brothers as he called them—owned several businesses in town and as far as she could glean, nine-to-five, Monday-Friday jobs weren’t really their thing.

“I do, too, and that would be great,” she said with a smile. She’d be able to focus on Suit and Blue tonight and have a full day with Simon rather than a few hours over dinner.

He let out what sounded like a relieved breath—as if she might have turned him down. “Great, why don’t I swing by your place around ten? We can go for a walk along the fire road trail, then lunch, then see what else we feel up to?”

She smiled. “Perfect.” She’d hiked a lot in her very early years, but then life had changed and she’d rarely had the opportunity. She’d never picked it back up, but she did love to amble through the mountains and down the old wagon trails. Nature displayed its own history exhibits. Every tall tree, every arrowhead or pottery shard, every bubbling creek carving its way down the hill, and every crumbling remnant of the first European settlers’ farms told a story.

“Great,” he said again. “Where are you now?”

“On Interstate 80, about fifty miles from Sac.” She hadn’t yet decided which route to take south from there. Her options were a two-lane road that wound through the mountains or a proper four-lane highway. The latter was the safest but nowhere near as pretty as the first.

“You want company until you get to wherever you’re going in Sac?” Simon asked, bringing her attention back to the call.

“You want to talk on the phone?” she clarified. She didn’t so much have confidence issues—okay, she had a few of those—but she did have a long history of men losing interest. That Simon wanted to spend the next hour talking with her, and on the phone no less, was something new.

He chuckled, no doubt at the shock in her voice.

“With you, yeah,” he said as something crashed to the floor in the background. He let out a quiet curse followed by some shuffling.

“Everything okay?” she asked, forgetting to be self-conscious about this man being interested in her .

“Yeah, dropped a board,” he replied, answering her question.

“Working on your house?” she asked. During their coffee dates, they’d talked about the farm he’d bought a couple of years earlier on the northwest side of town and his restoration of the 130-year-old Victorian farmhouse.

“Yeah, not happy with how the porch is coming along, though,” he said. For the next hour, they chatted about everything from the history of his property to the challenges she’d faced finding a rental when she’d moved to town several years earlier. They shared nothing earth-shattering, but it was a welcome distraction from both the drive and the events of the afternoon.

When she turned south onto the highway that would take her home, she reluctantly ended the call. She didn’t need to, but she’d implied she had an errand. She didn’t like misleading him, but she needed more time to process the events at the museum before she shared them.

The drive grew far less interesting without Simon to talk with, but at least she didn’t see any cars following her. And when she stopped to fill her tank, only two other vehicles took the same exit—a minivan overflowing with a family and a semi-truck carrying tomatoes.

By the time she merged onto the eastbound road to Mystery Lake, the only thing keeping her from accepting that she hadn’t been followed was her natural abundance of caution. And her irrational fear of tempting the fates by getting too comfortable.

The miles ticked by, and the golden fields gave way to forests of pine the higher she climbed. Cars merged and exited both ahead and behind her, but no single car seemed to trail her as she headed east or when she turned for the final stretch south.

Reaching Mystery Lake closer to nine than eight, she made her way through town, the familiar sights wrapping around her like a comforting blanket. Her favorite ice cream parlor, the candy store that made the chocolates she sent to her best friends every few months, the newly painted high school covered in murals designed by the students, the raised sidewalks, the quintessential “Western” architecture, and of course, the lake glistening under the moonlight on her left as she headed south to her condo.

Backing into her garage, she shut her car off as the door rolled closed. When the metal connected with the floor, closing her in, she let her head fall back against the seat. She was safe. For now. And in the comfort of her home, she could begin figuring out what to do next. If Suit and Blue were planning a murder, someone who could do something about it needed to know.

Which meant her first order of business was to figure out exactly who they were.