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Stepping into Jess’s house still echoing with the silence of her absence was one of the hardest things Savannah had ever done. Her sister’s perfume still lingered in the air, and next to Savannah, Simon teared up and clung to her hand. “You okay?”

she asked.

“Yeah.”

She and Hez exchanged a concerned glance. How did they help their nephew process all this when it was more than she could take in herself?

When Simon headed toward his room, Hez pulled her into an embrace. “We’ll get through this.”

She gave a wordless nod into his chest before she swallowed hard and pulled away. “See if you can find anything in her office that might point to the killer.”

He pressed a kiss on top of her head. “I’ll just be down the hall if you need me. Hope said they aren’t treating it as a crime scene for now, but if I find anything, I’ll call her. She doesn’t want us to remove any potential evidence.”

Savannah nodded and waited until his footsteps faded before forcing herself upstairs to check on Simon. Her job today was to go through Jess’s bedroom, but the thought of poking through her sister’s personal things felt like more than she could bear right now. She needed to adjust to being here first. This had to be so hard for Simon.

She found her nephew sitting on the edge of his bed. He stared blankly at the wall with its pictures of Will Dixon playing football. She entered the room and stopped by his bed. “Hey, buddy. Need some help?”

He didn’t respond at first, and it wasn’t until she touched his shoulder that he seemed to realize she was there. He shook his head wordlessly.

“I can pack for you.”

He stared at his hands and shook his head again. She’d talked to one of the counselors at the college and he’d told her to expect this kind of withdrawn behavior, but Savannah had thought their close relationship would weather the tragedy. Now she realized moving forward would be harder than she’d hoped. She squeezed his shoulder and backed out of the room. He needed to process his grief in his own way.

She went down the stairs and had started toward Jess’s bedroom when Hez called her from the office. The delay was more than welcome, and she hurried to join him. The impersonal space in the office let her catch her breath. She found Hez rummaging through a leather bag in Jess’s favorite taupe color. “Find something?”

“I think so.”

He pointed at two passports and a leather wallet beside the bag. “Have a look. She bought fake IDs.”

Savannah frowned and opened the top passport. Though the woman in the picture had red hair, it was clearly Jess. “Susan Jones.”

The other passport was Simon with matching red hair and a fake name of Shaun Jones. “She probably had them done digitally. Simon would have mentioned dyeing his hair for a picture.”

“She had the money to get them done right. Look here.”

He opened the bag wide to show a burner phone, a package of red hair dye, and a gun. “The pistol’s loaded and ready to go. This was her escape bag. She clearly knew she was in danger and might need to run quickly.”

A chill went down Savannah’s back. “Her desire for revenge was so strong. No wonder she’d kept Simon hidden away. Things spiraled out of control, and I don’t think she fully understood how things were closing in on her. She thought she was prepared.”

What must it have been like for Jess to live in constant fear for her life—and her son’s life? Savannah wanted to know how this all started. Could there be information in the old journals she’d found?

She glimpsed the shine of something silver in the bottom of the bag and reached inside to lift out a necklace caught in the seam along the back. Her pulse kicked at the heart-shaped locket that dangled from her fingers. “I haven’t seen this in years.”

“You recognize it?”

“Our mom gave it to her for her fifth birthday. It was Jess’s first piece of real jewelry, and she loved it. She didn’t take it off for years. It had two pictures of her with Mom.”

She fumbled with the clasp and opened it. A photo of Savannah and Jess together smiled back at her on the left side and one of Simon was on the right.

Her sister hadn’t intended to go anywhere without Savannah and Simon close to her heart.

* * *

Hez forced himself through the end of his mandatory—and overdue—online HR training. With a sigh of relief, he took a swig from the mug of lukewarm coffee on his office desk. As a lawyer he understood why institutions required this sort of thing, but that didn’t make it any less painful.

Now he could finally make the call he’d been itching to make all morning. He picked up his phone and dialed Hope’s number. She answered on the first ring. “Hi, Hez. I was just about to call you.”

“Do you have news?”

“Some. Thanks for telling us what you found at Jess Legare’s house. We sent in evidence techs, and they processed her home with a focus on her office.”

Hez nodded. “Makes sense. Have they found a safe yet?”

“A safe?”

Hope’s voice sharpened. “No. Did she have one?”

“I’m guessing she did. Her house was burglarized at least once while she was in jail last year.”

“True, but wouldn’t that have been the place for those fake passports and other items you found in her desk?”

“Yes—unless she didn’t think she’d have time to go to a safe and open it if she needed to run.”

Hope was silent for a moment. “That couldn’t have been an easy way to live, especially with her son.”

“No.”

Hez took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. Jess had made her own choices, but he still pitied her. And he especially pitied Simon. Would the poor kid ever really recover from being orphaned at ten? What would happen when he eventually learned the full truth about his mother?

Hez pushed those unanswerable questions aside and focused on the topic at hand. “Did your techs find anything interesting so far?”

“I hate to say it, but we have pretty clear evidence that she was involved in the artifact-smuggling ring. Her laptop contained images of looted items and PDFs of forged provenance documents. We also found TGU history department letterhead in her printer. Since she’s not in the history department, there was only one reason for her to have that.”

“She was forging provenance documents.”

Hez stared out his office window, barely registering the sweeping view of the campus. “So her appearance at the meeting with Savannah wasn’t a coincidence. That’s not a shock—I’ve suspected it since I heard she walked into that restaurant in New York, and any doubt vanished after we learned about her other activities. Still, it’s not great news. Do you think Jess’s murder was tied to the smuggling?”

“It’s possible, assuming she was the target. She had relatives in the smuggling ring, but this wouldn’t be the first time one family member killed another over a criminal enterprise. Maybe they had a dispute about money. Or maybe they suspected Jess was working with us.”

Hez replayed the memory of his last conversation with Jess. Had she been on the brink of switching sides? If so, had her criminal cohorts found out in time to plant a bomb in Hez’s Audi? “That’s an interesting thought. I—”

He heard a noise behind him and turned. Savannah stood in his doorway, face white. She clutched a document in her hand. “I have to go.”

As soon as he ended the call, Savannah held out the document to him. Her hand shook. “It’s a certified letter from Hornbrook. They’re demanding full payment within twenty-four hours.”

He took the letter from her and read it, which only took a few seconds. “I’m disgusted, but not surprised. Now that Jess is dead, there’s no reason to wait.”

Savannah’s eyes widened. “Do you think Hornbrook killed her?”

He shrugged. “I have no idea—and neither does Hope. I was just talking to her when you walked in.”

He decided to hold off on telling her about the new evidence of Jess’s involvement in the smuggling. They had more immediate problems. “I’m sure she and her team will get to the bottom of it.”

He held up the letter. “In the meantime, we need to deal with this.”

“How can we?”

“We really only have one option: bankruptcy.”

She gasped. “Won’t that destroy the university?”

“It might. But it’s also the only way to save it. I know that might sound a little crazy.”

A little color returned to her cheeks, and she gave him a faint smile. “Maybe a little, but I trust you.”

“Thanks. So you authorize me to file a bankruptcy petition on the university’s behalf?”

She swallowed hard. “Yes.”