Page 17

CHAPTER 17

After two rockstar bourbons post-dinner and a restful night of sleep, we agreed to extend our vacation one more day before going our separate ways—me to New Orleans and Maddie to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where she was scheduled to train a new staffer at the medical examiner’s office.

While Maddie was in the shower, I picked up the receiver on the hotel phone to punch up the front desk. Before I could, though, my cell rang with a call from Cade. Maddie was in the shower, so I knew I wouldn’t get any flak for taking the call. And besides, it felt like I hadn’t talked to him in ages. He knew nothing about what had been going on in North Carolina, and I decided I would share the highlights. Given Cade was a former chief of police in Wyoming, I was interested in his feedback on the note. I knew it would worry him, but there was no way to sugarcoat the threatening message.

“Catch any fish yet?” I asked.

“A bunch, and even though it’s been fun hanging out with the guys, I’ll be happy to get on home.”

“Mm, I’ll bet. There’s been a lot going on since we last?—”

“Sloane, you remember Andi Leland?”

I hadn’t expected her name to come up.

Andi Leland was a teenage girl who’d been kidnapped for human trafficking in Savannah, Georgia, over three years ago. My heart always jolted when I thought back to it. The details of the crimes were the stuff of nightmares. Maddie and I had been on vacation in the city while it was happening, so we did a little investigating on our own. And we solved it, stopping the killer right in his tracks. The killer mastermind, Hugh Barnes, was nothing short of psychotic. He ended up in prison where he belonged. He wasn’t there long before he was shanked, bleeding out on the floor of his cell, naked as the day he was born. He’d gotten what he deserved in the end, and I had to admit, I was elated when I heard about his demise.

“Sure, I remember Andi,” I said. “Such a brave young lady. Why are you asking about her?”

Cade’s long, heavy sigh indicated I wasn’t about to be given good news.

I braced myself, waited for him to continue.

“Andi called me?—”

“Why?”

“She was trying to get in touch with you but was dialing the wrong number. I told her you’d changed phone carriers back a year or so ago and your number too. Anyway, someone down there followed the breadcrumbs to me and gave her my number.”

It was true. I had changed my number. I’d wanted to tidy up my contact list—and my availability to others from my past when I worked full time. It was an attempt to streamline my life, which never seemed to work. I’d shared my new number with just a few key people, but I’d updated my business information online. She could have found me if she’d looked.

Given Cade’s doleful tone, it was obvious something was wrong, and my stomach did a few flips.

“What’s happened, Cade?” I asked.

There was a long pause on the line, followed by four horrible words that broke my heart. “Grady’s been murdered, Sloane.”

No … it couldn’t be.

After my first trip with Maddie to Savannah, the same trip where I’d learned Andi had been kidnapped, I’d become good friends with Grady. We’d kept in touch ever since, and a few weeks ago, I’d flown back to see his show.

The puzzle pieces in my mind, no matter how much I’d resisted admitting they fit together in any logical way, were coming together, and I couldn’t deny it.

My lunch with Kim a couple of weeks before.

My weekend visit with Grady.

And now … Harmony.

An eerie whimper escaped my lips, and I collapsed into the chair, slapping a hand over my mouth. Maddie came out of the bathroom, donning a robe. She took one look at me and fell to the floor at my knees.

“Sloane, what is it? What’s happened?”

Tears filled my eyes, and I fought them back. But I couldn’t speak. My entire body trembled as repercussions and theories and likelihoods took me deeper and deeper into a dark, unimaginable place.

In the gentlest of ways, she pried the phone from my fingers.

“Here, let me. It’s okay. I’ve got it.” Directing her attention to the phone screen, she held it to her ear and said, “Cade?”

“Maddie, is she okay?”

Maddie placed the call on speaker. “What’s going on, Cade? Tell me everything.”

And he did—at least, what little he knew.

Over a week ago, Grady had been murdered just before one of his stage performances, a knife to the heart—several times. Andi was afraid something might happen to her dad next—he was also a drag performer at the same nightclub. She wanted us to come down to Savannah, find out who murdered Grady and why before anyone else fell victim to the same fate.

Maddie spoke to Cade for a time, then she assured him I would be okay, that I just needed time to process what I’d just learned.

“Call me before you make a single move, ya hear me?” Cade said.

“Will do.”

The call ended, and she turned, staring at me for a few seconds, her hands on hips, concern in her eyes.

“I can’t believe it, Maddie,” I said. “Why? Why Grady? I don’t understand.”

She leaned over and took my hand in hers. “I don’t know, but all of this, it’s hitting too close to home. It’s time we get some answers.”