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R ory took his time in the tunnels. He’d heard voices from the past when he came through with Kate but had shoved them aside in his mind.

He didn’t need to succumb to their allure when he was with her, when she needed him to be strong for her.

He knew she had been scared in the tunnels and was, frankly, impressed by her bravery.

But now that he was alone, he opened his mind and saw into Hazard’s remarkable history.

It was like dropping from a great height and hovering in the air as if hang gliding, wind rushing past. For a moment he experienced a slight nausea and disorientation.

As a youth, this process had petrified him.

He hadn’t understood. Now he steeled himself, willing his mind to just let it happen.

Before his eyes in the dimness, two men in colonial rebel garb materialized.

He pressed his back to the wall as they shuffled by, weighed down with contraband.

They stumbled under the weight of the wooden barrel they carried.

One spoke, “Careful, lad, ’tis gunpowder.

Captain’ll have our hides if we blow the passage to kingdom come.

” The younger soldier had some choice epithets about the Captain that Rory couldn’t quite make out but got the gist of.

Even from the low tones in which they spoke, it was clear he was grumbling about their commander.

As they disappeared into the tunnels and faded from his sight, Rory grinned.

Some things never change. All throughout time, everyone complains about the boss.

He watched as the pair rounded the bend into the inn’s basement. Ah, so there was the destination of the smuggled items. Franklin Worthy was smuggling ammunition in the fight against the British. He shook his head a little and continued on.

He remained baffled that he could see into the past. Why him?

It only happened at the inn and here in the tunnels.

He had left Hazard, troubled by his experience of being trapped in the inn’s basement as a teen.

Right after it had happened, he’d tried to share what he saw, but everyone in town had assumed he’d hit his head and had a dream, or that he was high and had hallucinated it.

Neither was true. But a rational mind could not explain what he saw.

He took a deep breath. He hadn’t hit his head today, and he certainly wasn’t high.

He also wasn’t seeing ghosts, not exactly.

Despite telling Kate her inn was haunted, that description didn’t feel accurate.

Haunting implied an active effort by the dead to affect the living.

What he saw were not the dead. No, what he was seeing was a projection of the past. For some reason he was attuned to history, attuned to the past as if the division between then and now thinned down here beneath the inn.

Perhaps when people saw ghosts, like he did, they were simply seeing into the past.

Did fleeting images of history rate as a kind of haunting?

It was too philosophical a thought to dwell on, at least for now.

Rory took his phone out to follow along with the GPS.

He needed to keep track of where he was below the town.

At Camellia and Suffrage, he halted. Another branch of tunnel veered off, but it was barricaded by a pile of rubble. Impassable.

Circumstance? Or had someone created this intentionally?

Rory moved further on. He halted before a soldier carrying an armful of American long rifles.

Rory slid into an alcove to watch. Another soldier trailed behind with two muskets.

“I prefer the Brown Bess to these,” he was saying as they passed by together.

Distracted by the scene from the past, Rory plowed into a spider web hanging down in the alcove.

He wiped it off his face and then jumped, slapping at the large, dark spider crawling on his arm.

It escaped and scurried away, no doubt to build a new web for tomorrow.

He shivered at the common house spider. It wasn’t dangerous, but Kate would not have enjoyed this.

He needed to come through with a broom. He had cleared out most of the webs yesterday, but these were some determined spiders, because he was having to sweep them out again less than twenty-four hours later.

It wasn’t long before he reached the underground entrance to Agate Point.

It mystified him. The mansion hadn’t been built until the early twentieth century.

Of Art Deco design, it had been constructed in the 1920s.

This tunnel must have led to whatever was here before.

And that was information his granddad ought to know.

If he was willing to share the information.

Rory stepped into the wine cellar at Agate Point and made his way up the stairs, only to discover that the door was locked. He shook it. It appeared to be not just locked but bolted.

That presented a problem. Now what? Knock and scare the dickens out of his granddad? Rory frowned. He took out his phone and rang Seymour. He heard the jaunty tune he’d programmed into his granddad’s phone just for his calls play directly over on the other side of the door.

Seymour swung open the door and glared at his grandson. “I locked it, so you couldn’t get in.”

This was a revelation. “You don’t want me here? I know you arranged for me to sleep somewhere else, but I thought I would still be welcome to come visit you during the day.”

“Don’t want you sneaking around, as fun as you might find that. You kids. Always gotta snoop where you don’t belong.”

Rory was trying to process his granddad’s hostile behavior when his next words explained it all. “I have cameras, boy. I’m not an idiot.”

“Cameras? Monitoring the basement?” His voice rose in disbelief. “Were you worried I’d get into your alcohol? I am of age, you know.”

Seymour waved a hand in the air and scoffed. “Of the tunnels, boyo. I get an alert if anyone enters.”

“So you know…”

“About the tunnels? About you and the new innkeeper traipsing around, snuggled up and cozy down there? Well, of course, I know.”

Rory decided to ignore his granddad’s description of his interaction with Kate in the tunnels.

She’d been scared, that’s all, which was why she’d been pressed up against him.

Not that he’d minded. He’d been glad to be…

of comfort to her. It had felt good to have her pressed…

Rory coughed to redirect his thoughts…to be able to provide her some reassurance.

“So you know about the entrance to the inn?” Rory pressed. His granddad wouldn’t meet his eyes.

Seymour huffed.

“You knew the inn connected to the tunnel but haven’t told the new owner?” His voice rose in disbelief.

Seymour shook his head, white hair flopping. “It’s a secret, boy.”

“Shame on you.”

Seymour harrumphed. “We were getting around to it. We needed to be certain she could be trusted.”

“ We? ”

But Seymour was already hustling away, and Rory suspected he would not be getting an answer to that question any time soon.

Maybe not ever. His granddad could be remarkably closed-lipped.

Who exactly knew about the tunnels? And, really, what was the big deal with letting Rory in on it?

Why did his grandfather make him ferret out every little detail himself?

“You could just tell me what’s going on.”

“I could, but where’s the fun in that?” Seymour grumbled, as they passed through the beautifully restored mansion.

They rode up in a newly installed elevator.

Huffing a little from even that exertion, Seymour flopped into an overstuffed section of the new sofa and reclined, easing the section back. “That’s better.”

Rory frowned and sat. “So, you have cameras.”

“Yes, we’re very careful, and yes, Kate Mayfield needs to be informed. We didn’t know her entrance was still open, or Marjorie would have insisted we talk to her before.”

“So, Marjorie knows?”

“We all know. Me, Marjorie, Lydia, and Hazel. But we can’t share that information with just anyone. It wouldn’t be responsible. We only share on a need-to-know basis. It was always that way. The Patriot tunnel was used in the Revolutionary War for smuggling.”

It was a fitting name for the tunnel, with all its history behind it. Rory gave a brief nod. “I know.”

Seymour raised a brow, “Oh? How exactly?”

Rory shrugged a shoulder to annoy his granddad.

Seymour peered at him through his spectacles. “Because of your vision.”

Rory supposed that was as good a word for it as any. When he was first rescued from the basement disaster, he had tried to explain what happened to him. No one believed he’d seen the past. It had been hugely frustrating. But apparently, Seymour had believed, and that raised more questions.

Rory leaned forward, this time to peer back at Seymour, who suddenly shifted in discomfort and made himself busy looking everywhere but at Rory. “Why do you believe in my visions? Do you have visions?”

“Me?” Seymour scoffed. “No, never. But my Margot, she did. Her family were early settlers to the area before they fell on hard times and moved over to Middleton. They sold their property in 1920, and my great-grandfather bought it all up cheap, all except for the inn.”

“Wait, Grandma’s family once owned the inn?”

“Well, yes, that’s why it was her furniture…

sort of. Anyway, long story, but the families were opposed to us falling in love.

” Seymour got a faraway look in his eyes.

“This was a small American Colonial home before it burned down. My grandfather bought the property cheap from Margot’s family and built this mansion.

She wasn’t considered good enough for me by my family.

Can you imagine? But Margot could always see into the past. I think your father can, too.

He refused to enter any of the old buildings on the town green.

He couldn’t wait to get out of Hazard. He’s much happier living in a new section of Providence with all new buildings.

But for you, there’s just something about Hazard. It’s in your blood. Part of you.”

“You don’t see into the past.”

“I wish I did. I love the history of Hazard. Margot used to share her gift with me, give me glimpses. It was wonderful.”

Rory nodded. If one discarded all rational thought, all science, and everything he had ever learned in school, sure, Hazard made sense. Hazard was magical, and he was from here, and his ancestors were from here, and he could see into the past. Made perfect sense. Yep, so, okay…moving on.

But if his grandmother had been able to share her gift, maybe he could too. Rory took Seymour’s hand. “Share the past with me.”

*

Kate finished up her painting and showered to get the paint off her skin and out of her hair.

Her well-worn Linkin Park T-shirt was a total loss.

She wasn’t sure how she felt about losing that relic of her teen years, so she tossed it in the wash.

She would be doing more painting. It could be her paint shirt now, she supposed.

Once clad in soft jeans and a comfy sweatshirt adorned with autumn leaves, Kate got to thinking about how the woman had said Rory Rollins , not Throckmorton.

Where have I heard that name?

Rory was not a common first name, so the woman must’ve been referring to Kate’s guest. Anything else was too much of a coincidence. Plus, she had mentioned seeing him carrying in the furniture.

Kate had been busy with painting so she’d let what the woman said slide, but it bugged her. Of course, she could ask Rory, but she had the decided feeling he wouldn’t share much.

What did she really know about him except that he was Seymour’s grandson? He had gone to school with Ivy. And he’d been locked in her basement.

Kate decided an internet search was in order, but would it be invasive to run a search on her guest?

Kate shook her head. Absolutely not. In fact, she might find it necessary from time to time to run internet searches on a guest. Because safety .

And she certainly wouldn’t be drawing on her contacts for personal info as she had in the past when she worked for her father.

This was just an innocent internet search.

Still, as she settled at her laptop and typed Rory Rollins into the browser, she was not expecting what she found.

Rory was a keyboardist.

For a band .

An indie band she had heard of. In fact, in certain circles, a really popular indie band, with songs that hit the indie charts. Kate had even seen some of their videos.

“Classical pianist my ass,” she muttered as she started to read. “He’s with Endeavor Street!”