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Savannah knelt beside the budding azaleas in the garden outside her office and methodically pulled new weeds. Another few weeks, and the bushes would explode with blossoms. She dropped the weeds into the bag she’d brought out before settling on the bench beside Hez. Bees hummed around them, and if not for her grief, she might have enjoyed the warm sun on her face. But Jess’s death had faded the colors of life to a dull sepia.

Hez pulled her against his side, and she leaned into his embrace. The familiar scent of his skin—a sage soap that blended perfectly with his spicy cologne—made her move closer. He pressed a kiss on the side of her head, and his sympathetic presence was enough to lift a few of the gray clouds in her heart. Her eyes blurred, and she swallowed down the lump forming in her throat at the thought that Jess would never see the shrub’s white blossoms burst forth from their buds. Savannah would never hear Jess’s voice again and would never coax another smile from her.

Hez trailed his fingers along the skin of her bare arm, and his touch brought her out of her thoughts. She tucked her hair behind her ear and straightened. He’d texted her for a reason, and she needed to rouse enough from her stupor of pain to help figure out their situation. “So what’s your update? Have you come up with a Hail Mary pass for TGU?”

“I don’t know yet. I got a call from Martine.”

She tensed at the woman’s name but managed to control her expression. “She had an idea?”

“She has a client with information on the bankruptcy. He’s skittish so he wants to meet privately.”

“Privately? What if it’s an ambush?”

He fingered his scar. “Her client is wise to be security conscious. He’s putting himself in danger by helping us. She says we’re on the same team, and I believe her.”

Savannah pressed her lips together. “I hope that’s true.”

“We don’t have many options. If we don’t find something that will help us, we’ll lose the stay motion. Hornbrook will seize TGU, and it will be all over.”

All over. This couldn’t be the end of the university her family had poured its life into for decades. She exhaled. “Okay, I get it. We have to try.”

She turned his head toward her so his gaze locked with hers. “Promise me you’ll be careful.”

She gently traced the healing incision on his head. “You can’t take another blow to the head, Hez. And I can’t b-bear the thought of losing you too.”

Her eyes flooded with moisture and she bit her lip, trying to gain control. Hez needed to attend that meeting focused and ready. She couldn’t send him off to slay dragons while he was worried about her.

He leaned in for a lingering kiss. “You know I will. It’s in a public place, so there’s little danger.”

She could think of all kinds of danger. A sniper, an attack out of nowhere. The cunning ways of their enemy had taken a heavy toll, but he didn’t want to see it. Jess had been in a public lot, yet they’d managed to set a bomb without detection.

His phone sounded, and he drew it from his pocket. “It’s Hope.”

He answered it and put the phone to his ear for a moment. “Savannah is right here. Let me turn on speakerphone so we can both hear the news.”

He touched the screen. “Go ahead, Hope, we’re both listening.”

“Savannah, did you know Jess had a safe in her office?”

Hope sounded energized.

“No, she never showed me anything like that.”

“It was built into the back of her closet, and we found the key to open it. In addition to a copy of her will, we found several thousand dollars in cash.”

“Her will?”

“She left everything to you in trust for Simon and named you as his guardian.”

Savannah closed her eyes. She hadn’t thought through this kind of thing, but it made sense Jess would want her to care for Simon. But what about Simon’s father? Erik Andersen had vanished and the police suspected foul play, but they had never found his body. If anything would make him reappear, it was money. He would move heaven and earth to get the boy if it meant he would be in control of Jess’s estate. Savannah knew her sister well enough to be certain she’d left behind a substantial amount of money and investments.

“Are you guys still there?”

Hope asked.

“Sorry, yes. Just a little stunned. I would never let him go anywhere else.”

Savannah wanted to stand and pace, but she didn’t think her legs would hold her.

Hez’s arm tightened around her. “I’ll help you figure it out, babe. I’ll get probate opened to get the will processed.”

“I’ve read the will, and everything is in a trust,”

Hope said. “The house, her personal property, all her investments and cash. She left nothing out.”

“That’s helpful,”

Hez said. “The trust will likely be automatic, and Savannah would have become the successor trustee the instant Jess died. Anything in that trust would pass to you, Savannah. That makes one thing easy anyway.”

“The crime techs should be done soon, and I’ll release all of it to you, Savannah. You can have most of the house’s contents immediately. Her phone and laptop are in the process of being imaged and will probably be done by end of day. I’ll text you when you can have them.”

Savannah sagged against Hez as she realized all she needed to do. Jess’s beautiful house would need to be sold. Savannah would have to oversee financial records, investments, bank accounts—everything. But she had a university to save too, and even that task by itself seemed impossible. Simon wasn’t a burden but a blessing—but the other things would take more time and focus than she had to spare.

Hez’s deep voice rumbled against her ear. “Thanks for everything, Hope.”

Savannah straightened. “Yes, thank you, Hope.”

“My pleasure.”

The call ended, and Hez put his phone away. “There’s another probate proceeding I’ll start immediately—adoption.”

He paused. “Do you think Erik Andersen is still alive?”

“I thought about him. The DNA tests on the blood drops found in his home showed that it was his, but that doesn’t prove he’s dead. I’m so afraid he’s going to show up and fight for Simon.”

Hez’s jaw flexed. “He has to get past me to reach our boy. I’ll fight him with everything I’ve got.”

His words bolstered Savannah’s courage. He truly loved Simon just like she did. And while Hez was a formidable attorney, would the law see the issue his way?

“Erik is—or at least was—Simon’s father,”

Hez continued. “I’ve never handled an adoption case, but I know birth parents have strong rights in Alabama. Also, Erik has been denied contact with him for all of his life. A court might see that as unfair. And while we both know he was up to his elbows in the criminal activity involving TGU, he hasn’t been convicted of anything.”

“And hopefully he won’t want to show up and face criminal proceedings.”

“Hopefully.”

Hez tugged at his lower lip for a moment, then shrugged. “Let’s not borrow tomorrow’s trouble.”

Dread curled in Savannah’s stomach. Her sister had hidden away a whole other life—her son. What other secrets might be uncovered as they probed deeper into Jess’s life? She turned toward Hez. “Let’s look at those old journals.”

She led him inside to her office where she’d stashed them on a high shelf.

He got all three of them down and carried them to where she sat at the desk. “What are we looking for?”

“I need to understand why she did this. I think my great-grandfather, Luc, was gone by the time Jess was born. Let me look at his journal.”

She reached for the thickest, most well-worn one and opened it. “I know some of the early history, of course. Joseph Willard founded the university and hired Louis Legare to teach. No one trusted Joseph from the very beginning. They called him a carpetbagger, and he was, even according to Helen Willard. He went to Mexico and came back with the Willard Treasure. A fire started during a burlesque show, and its aftermath turned up unpaid taxes that drove him out of town. My ancestors took over.”

“So after founding the college, the Willards felt pushed out and excluded all these years.”

She nodded. All the older history wasn’t what she was looking for. What corrupted Jess? She flipped through Grandpa Andre’s journal. The late 1990s were probably Jess’s most formative years. Her finger jabbed an entry. “Listen to this.”

Pierre is a fine president, though perhaps too focused on prestige projects at the expense of the mundane practicalities of running a university. I wish he would spend a bit more time with his daughters. Since Marie’s death he completely shuns young Jess, and while perhaps understandable, it’s not her fault. She’s a sweet child, desperate for approval and love from him. She came to me on Sunday afternoon and sat by my feet in the rocker on the porch. She asked why Pierre hated her so much. My son had actually shoved her and told her he hated her. What could I say? It’s not my place to explain something so complex. I hugged her and assured her of my love, but I could tell it was small comfort. I will have a talk with Pierre about it.

Tears rolled down Savannah’s cheeks as she saw Jess’s pain in this short entry. That poor lost little girl. Dad was the one at fault, and he didn’t care at all how much damage he’d done.

* * *

Hez scanned Pelican Harbor’s picturesque boardwalk and waterfront, looking for people who might want to kill him. He leaned against the Bayfront Inn’s clapboard exterior. The rambling old building started life as a mansion before being converted into a bed-and-breakfast two decades ago, and its harbor-facing side had convenient nooks between bay windows. Hez stood in one, which partially concealed him while offering a good view of the boardwalk and the beach beyond.

The mid-March sun warmed his face, and a gentle sea breeze carried the sounds of shouting and laughter from a group of swimsuit-clad TGU students playing beach volleyball. A few people strolled the boardwalk or sat at the wrought-iron tables outside Maria’s restaurant. A vaguely familiar little old lady with a tiny dog smiled at him. No obvious assassins lurked among the beachgoers.

Martine appeared at the far end of the boardwalk. She wore designer sunglasses, but otherwise she wasn’t dressed for the beach. She had on a formfitting cream suit and a navy blouse, and her heels knocked on the weathered wood as she approached.

Hez stepped out when she was about ten yards away. “Good afternoon, Martine.”

She flashed a perfect smile. “Ah, there you are. Good to see you, Hez.”

She took off her sunglasses and her almond-shaped eyes examined his face. “I kinda like the scar and crew cut. They make you look a little dangerous and mysterious.”

He ignored her comment and looked past her. “Where’s your client?”

“Oh, my client isn’t here. They’re security conscious, remember?”

“Yes, which is why I’m here.”

Hez let a hint of annoyance into his voice. “I thought we were meeting on the boardwalk so they could give me information about Hornbrook.”

“I have the information, but it’ll be just the two of us.”

She sidled up to him and winked. “I hope that’s okay.”

His irritation grew. This sort of low-level flirting had been fun when they were unattached law students, but it got on his nerves now. At least Savannah didn’t have to deal with it too. “What’s the information?”

“Keep your voice down.”

She glanced around and a frown creased her smooth forehead. “More people are on the boardwalk than I expected.”

He followed her gaze. A few people strolled around. None were within earshot right now, but it was true someone could walk past at any moment.

Martine slipped off her heels and put a hand on Hez’s lower back, guiding him toward the beach. “Let’s walk on the sand. It’ll be more private, and I love how it feels when it’s warm.”

Hez kept his shoes on. “So what do you have for me?”

he asked when they had walked a few paces.

“I assume you’re familiar with that artifact-smuggling ring the police broke up a couple of weeks ago.”

“You might say that. What about it?”

“It started in Mexico and ended in New York, right? The Mexican authorities wrapped up their end and American cops made arrests all the way from the border to the Big Apple. But the trail went cold there. No one was arrested at the retail end of the chain. Strange, don’t you think?”

Hez kept a tight rein on his emotions. Was she going to tell him that Jess was the New York end of the smuggling route? Was that her secret information? “Go on.”

“Most of the artifact buyers were Hornbrook Finance clients. James Hornbrook personally facilitated a number of sales. He even owns one or two of the smuggled artifacts.”

“Seriously?”

Hez stopped and stared down at her. “You have proof of this?”

She gave him a coy smile and tucked a strand of blonde hair behind her ear. “Yes.”

“Where is it?”

She started walking again, forcing him to keep pace. “I can’t give it to you, sorry.”

“Why not?”

“The nature of the proof would put my client’s identity at risk.”

She gave him a playful nudge with her elbow. “You’re a clever guy. You’ll find the evidence on your own. I have faith in you.”

He tried to keep the exasperation out of his voice. “Can you at least give me a hint on where to find it? I—”

Martine stumbled against him. “Ow!”

He instinctively put an arm around her waist to steady her. “Are you okay?”

“I stepped on something.”

She lifted her right foot and examined the sole. “No blood. It must’ve been a rock.”

She tried putting weight on it and winced. “Can you help me back to the boardwalk?”

He didn’t have much choice. “Of course.”

They turned around and recrossed the beach. She held on to his shoulder for support, and he kept his arm around her. He really hoped no one he or Savannah knew was watching.

They reached the boardwalk. She brushed the sand off her feet and slipped her heels back on. “Thanks. That feels better.”

“Do you need help getting back to your car?”

“I’ll be fine. Hez, I . . .”

She paused and seemed to reconsider what she was about to say. She put on her sunglasses. “Good luck in court.”

She turned and walked away without a trace of a limp.