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I run. I run as fast as I can, leaving the alleyway and racing home. I arrive in record time, bounding up the stairs to our apartment and turning the key in our door. Juan is pacing in the entrance, his eyes wide, phone in hand.

“Madre mía,” he exclaims the second I enter. He hugs me so tight I can feel his heart pounding in his chest. “I called you and you didn’t answer. Are you okay?” he asks.

I realize then that Juan has been as worried about the death threat as I’ve been. He’s just been hiding it to make me feel safer.

“I’m fine,” I say between gasps for breath. “I’m okay.”

“Where were you?” he asks. “I came home expecting you to be here, and you weren’t. Then you didn’t answer your phone. I was so scared.” He takes me by the hand and leads me to Gran’s threadbare sofa. He puts both of his palms on my cheeks. “I don’t know what I would do if…if something ever—”

“Juan, I’m okay,” I say. “But I have some things to tell you.”

I recount the whole story about my walk home—how a black car sidled up to me, blocking me in an alley, how I thought I was going todie.

“We need to call the police—now!” he says, interrupting.

“Wait,” I say. “There’s more.” I tell him how my mother came out of the car and all the things she told me—how the egg was stolen by a gang of hired men who don’t want it found, how it once belonged to Gran, and how, worst of all, not only did my mother ask me for money but her parting words to me were a threat.

As I deluge Juan with the shocking details, his phone on the coffee table rings.

“It’s Mr.Preston,” he says. “I left him a panicked message.”

“Take the call. Tell him I’m okay,” I say.

Juan answers and relates what happened to me. Then he ends the call. “He’s on his way here. He wants to see you.”

“Now?” I say.

“Yes now,” Juan replies.

In the time it takes for me to answer Juan’s copious questions and for Juan to brew tea and put together a plate of hors d’oeuvres à la Juan, there’s a knock on the door. I open it, expecting only my gran-dad but am greeted by a twofer that includes a very anxious-looking Angela.

“Angela? Why are you here?” I ask.

“You went missing, Molly. Juan called Mr.Preston. Mr.Preston called me. Did you really think we wouldn’t come running?”

Angela and Mr.Preston launch themselves at me. They’re hugging me so tight my spleen is about to burst.

“I’m okay,” I squeak from the middle of the sandwich, “or at least I was until a second ago.”

Reluctantly they release me.

“Molly,” Angela says, “there are days when you test my patience, but I can’t stand the thought of a world without you in it.”

“My thoughts exactly,” says my gran-dad as he sets a bag on the floor.

Mr.Preston and Angela remove their shoes, and because they know me so well, they wipe the bottoms and place them neatly in our front closet. It’s then I notice Gran-dad’s hands are shaking.

“You can relax. I’m fine. Please, sit.”

We gather in the living room, and as Juan serves tea, I repeat the entire alley ordeal.

Gran-dad eyes me darkly as he listens. “So she’s crawled out of the woodwork again—my daughter. Maggie.”

“She wanted to warn me,” I say.

“Warn you?” Gran-dad replies. “Do you have any idea how many times I tried to help her over the years? Her mother—your gran—tried, too. But she always fell back into her old life. And now that dreadful life is edging closer and putting you in danger.”

There’s a knock on the door.

“Now what?” I ask. “Did someone order a clown?”

“Not exactly, but I did text someone,” says Angela as she jumps up to open the door.

Detective Stark stands in the threshold. She’s wearing a baggy tracksuit, looking piqued and flushed. “I was grocery shopping, but I came running the second I got Angela’s message.”

“Clearly you weren’t the only one,” I say, as I gesture to my living room, which is now so packed with guests that Juan has to bring in a chair from the kitchen so the detective has somewhere to sit.

With everyone jammed in, I sit on the sofa between Juan and my gran-dad, recounting one more time everything that happened from the moment the black car sidled up to me to when my mother drove away. When I finish speaking, everyone is silent.

“We have to find her,” says Detective Stark. “We have to find this Maggie Gray.”

“No!” I reply vehemently. “I don’t want to find her. And I don’t want to find the egg. Since I went on that TV show, the Fabergé has brought me nothing but anguish, and calling off the search is the only way I’ll be safe. She said as much.”

“If Maggie’s telling the truth,” says my gran-dad. “But what if she’s not? What if you’re in danger regardless?”

Angela stands and starts to pace the only free spot of floor in the room. “There’s something that’s bugged me ever since the egg disappeared—that note in the vacuum canister. Why was it addressed to Molly?”

“Because whoever wrote it knows I’m the one who cleans the canister,” I reply.

“Angela’s right. It doesn’t make sense,” says Stark. “If the gang that pulled off this heist really wanted the search to stop, why not threaten the police instead of you? You’re just a maid.”

“She’s more than that to us,” says Juan. “She’s everything.”

“What I’m trying to say is that Molly might be connected to this egg in ways we don’t quite fully understand,” Stark clarifies.

“Yet,” Angela adds.

“Gran is the missing link,” I explain. “My mother all but said so. But what I can’t believe is that she would ever steal anything from anyone.”

“Agreed. I knew Flora well,” says my gran-dad, “and I can tell you, that woman was no thief.”

“Necessity can make a thief out of anyone. I’ve seen it before,” says Stark.

“Impossible,” my gran-dad replies. “Flora was different.” He stands then and walks to the door, where he left his bag. He grabs it and brings it to the living room.

“Molly, when you were on Hidden Treasures, your shoebox contained many of your gran’s things, and as I mentioned before, there was one item in that box that caught my eye, and it wasn’t the Fabergé.”

“The key?” I ask.

“Yes,” he replies as he removes a book from his bag.

He hands me an old leather-bound diary with a heart-shaped lock on the front. “She gave this to me for safekeeping before she died,” says Gran-dad. “She told me to give it to you, but only when you were settled and ready to read it.”

“I’m decidedly unsettled at the moment,” I say. “And far from ready.”

“But, Molly,” Angela says, “what if she’s left you a message? What if the diary contains clues about the egg?”

“Gran never talked about her past,” I say. “She was very secretive and reluctant to reveal anything. Let sleeping dogs lie. That’s what she always said. My guess is this book contains recipes or fairy tales. She loved to make up stories—the more fanciful, the better.”

Juan gets up from the sofa and walks over to Gran’s curio cabinet. He picks up the skeleton key from the shelf where I used to keep the Fabergé. “It can’t hurt to try the key,” he says.

He returns to the sofa and passes it to me. I take it in one hand as I hold the diary in the other. I put the key in the lock—a perfect fit. I turn it once, and like magic, something clicks.