Chapter 71
Had she forgotten to leave the lights on?
When Tessa clicked open her hotel room door into dense and unfamiliar darkness, it was all she could do to cross the threshold.
Strangers had gotten into her hotel rooms before, that was not her imagination.
Someone might be lurking behind every closet and sliding door.
Danger might be hidden in every drawer. In her suitcase.
Under the bed. She clicked on all the lights, every one of them, even the ugly gooseneck by the window, and the television, too.
Yanked the curtains across the windows, shutting out the street below.
Changed into her jersey nightgown with the bathroom door closed and wrapped on a terry bathrobe, needing privacy, craving security. Security that had utterly vanished.
She’d made it through the event, unsettled and wary, had forced herself to focus on her readers.
Signing two hundred books, and searching every face.
Meanwhile, Harper had disappeared. Tessa, hyperalert, Ubered back to the hotel.
Felt like a fugitive as she hurried through the hotel lobby and up to her room, apprehensive at every step, feeling watched and monitored and trapped.
Ten at night in Des Moines, and she was starving, but the front desk clerk had told her room service was closed.
Now she was in her nightgown, with nothing but a bag of pretzels from the airplane and the two complimentary bottles of hotel water.
If she broke down, from the fear and the guilt, it wouldn’t matter.
Nothing would matter. And her search for the will had been a dead end.
She yanked open the foil bag of pretzels with her teeth, spilling salt and twisted things all over the gray carpeting. Do not cry, she ordered herself, she did not need Annabelle to remind her.
She could foresee a day when she’d never see her husband or children again. Whatever Henry’s petty transgressions had been, it didn’t matter. Not when Tessa had been a part of a devastating crime. She hadn’t known, she honestly hadn’t, but because she didn’t know didn’t mean it didn’t exist.
Tomorrow that woman was picking her up. Tomorrow she would know—something.
Perched on the edge of the bed, her back to the curtains, the light from the muted TV in her peripheral vision, she flipped open her laptop. And opened Facebook.
The woman at the bookstore had been right. The locket picture on Tessa’s Facebook page was gone. Everything else remained; Tessa’s snapshots of audiences, her airport adventures, the joyous hoopla of book tour, success and adventure. Only the photo of the man in Maine had disappeared.
Three sharp raps on her door. Wrong room, she wanted to yell. Mistake. Go away.
Three more raps. There were no packages for her. She would never accept another package. No more chocolates. If she pretended she was not here, they would go away.
It worked. The footsteps receded. She closed her computer and crept to the peephole. The padding footsteps started again. Coming closer.
Tessa pivoted. Put her back to the door, her head covering the peephole. Her heart pounding. Trying not to breathe. She heard a sound, and then a white thing came under her door, slid past her bare feet, and lay there. A single white, business-sized envelope on the gray carpeting.
She stared at the blank rectangle. Lying there, taunting her, daring her to look inside.
“What do you want from me?” she said out loud.
They’ve made that pretty clear, Annabelle said. And more to come when she picks you up tomorrow.
She yanked open her hotel room door, not caring about the bathrobe, and looked both ways, up and down the sconce-lighted hall. She grabbed her room key, closed the door, and raced, barefoot, toward the elevator. But the doors had already closed.
And now, she realized as she raced back to her room, the envelope was probably gone. Of course. Whoever was tormenting her would certainly not have missed the opportunity to screw with her one last time tonight.
She tapped her key card, opened the door.
The room was still empty. The envelope was still there.
Every ugly name in her vocabulary raced through her mind. Every bitter and hateful description of that woman in the car, the woman who’d seemed to revel in showing how much access she had, how much power over Tessa’s career and family, her entire life.
Blackmail never worked for long, Tessa knew that, from movies maybe, or reading thrillers? But it seemed to be working now, that was for sure. She closed her door. Locked it. Chained it.
She swooped up the envelope, giving only a moment’s thought about fingerprints—then ripped it open. Inside, white paper folded in thirds.
The paper made a crackling sound as she pulled it from the envelope. Papers, plural, it turned out, stapled at the upper left corner. She walked toward the desk, unfolding.
Copies, she could tell from the intermittent gray borders around the edges. And no mystery what this was. She recognized it instantly from the caption at the top.
THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF SAVANNAH MATTIGAN DANFORTH