Chapter 3
The afternoon sunlight poured through the front windows of Annie’s Antiques, turning dust motes into drifting gold and throwing long shadows across the chaos that had once been her carefully staged displays. Annie paused just inside the doorway and forced herself to take it in with fresh eyes.
Overturned chairs. A toppled side table. A display case shifted inches off center, like the shop itself had flinched.
After seeing Uncle Eric’s blood on her kitchen floor, this damage should have felt small. It did—and it didn’t. The mess looked like a stranger’s hands had been everywhere, touching what wasn’t theirs, rearranging her life with careless force.
Jack stepped in behind her, the door closing with a muted thud that seemed too final in the hollowed space.
He’d insisted on coming with her after the hospital—said he wasn’t comfortable letting her walk back into this alone, not when someone had already proven they would hurt people to get what they wanted.
He didn’t speak at first. He didn’t have to.
His gaze moved the way it always had when he worked a scene—slow, methodical, cataloging what had been disturbed and what had been left behind.
He was wearing the ‘Detective face’ she used to tease him about.
She let her gaze move where his had, noting the small, telling details—the drawer that had been pulled out and shoved back crooked, the papers that had been rifled through but not scattered, the faint drag marks where boxes had been shifted and then abandoned.
“What are you looking for?” She ask Jack after following his pointed looks for several seconds.
“Nothing. Just making sure there isn’t anything the team may have missed.”
He turned his attention back to her.
“So, where do we start?” Jack asked.
Annie didn’t hesitate. She turned and led him toward the back of the shop, past the damaged display and the overturned chair, to the crates she hadn’t yet fully unpacked from the Blackwood estate sale.
Several lids were loose now. Packing paper spilled where someone had forced it aside.
Items sat out of place, returned without care.
“Here,” she said. “Everything I got from the Blackwood estate is in these boxes.”
They began pulling items free with care.
Jack lifted out photo albums while Annie gathered the bundles of old newspapers and correspondence she had stacked aside for later review.
The shop grew quiet except for the soft sounds of paper and leather and the faint tick of the wall clock.
Faces from another century stared up at them—formal portraits, family gatherings, society photographs, Eleanor’s image recurring again and again, young, composed, and unsettlingly watchful.
Annie laid the newspapers across the counter, skimming headlines until familiar names surfaced. Blackwood. Fairview. Business expansions. Charity events. And then, months later, the careful phrasing surrounding Eleanor’s disappearance.
From a smaller crate, she lifted out several clothbound journals and set them beside the papers. Jack brought the albums over and exhaled slowly.
“This is what they didn’t want you reading,” he said.
Annie opened the nearest diary, the brittle pages whispering beneath her fingers. “Then this is where we find out why.”
And together, they started where Eleanor had left her voice behind.
Jack stood close behind her, solid enough that she could feel his presence without looking back. “Crime scene finished up about an hour ago,” he said. “They lifted some prints, but most of them will match yours or Eric’s.”
She nodded, because if she tried to speak, grief might pour out of her instead.
The hospital had promised Eric was stable. No skull fracture. A serious concussion. They would keep him overnight and call if anything changed.
They always said that.
Her mind kept replaying the moment she’d found him—face-down on her kitchen floor, blood matted in his hair, his breath thin and wrong. Every time she blinked, she saw the gouged letters on the wall again.
YOU’RE NEXT.
Jack shifted, gentle but purposeful. “We need to look for anything tied to Eleanor Blackwood,” he said. “If they came back twice, they might want more than the locket. Or they missed something the first time. Either way, we need to find it before they do.”
They.
The plural snagged in Annie’s chest.
This didn’t feel like a desperate thief acting alone. Someone had forced her off the road. Someone had broken into the shop. Someone had ransacked her apartment while she sat at the station and wrote her statement. Someone had carved a warning into her wall.
Someone coordinated this.
Someone watched.
“I’ll start with the books,” she said, moving toward the stacked boxes she’d brought home from the Blackwood estate sale. “If someone hid something in a hollowed-out spine or between pages—”
“Good.” Jack pulled out his phone. “I’m ordering lunch. We’ll be here a while.”
The bell above the door chimed as he stepped outside.
The moment he left the threshold, the shop’s silence changed. It didn’t simply quiet—it exposed her. The front windows suddenly felt too wide, too clear, too inviting to anyone who wanted to look in and calculate.
He’s just outside, she reminded herself. He’ll come right back.
She forced her shoulders down and turned to the boxes.
Work gave her something to hold onto. Not control, exactly—but rhythm. Purpose. The familiar comfort of details.
She opened the first box and lifted a stack of books out carefully, like she handled fragile relics in a museum. Her fingers traced the cracked leather. She breathed in the faint scent of old paper and dust and time.
She flipped through each volume, her thumb skimming page edges, her gaze searching the seams where someone might tuck a note. She checked the inside covers for loose liners, ran a fingernail along the inner spine, pressed gently at the back boards in case she found an unnatural give.
She kept her breathing steady.
She kept her mind from straying back to blood.
A leather-bound copy of Pride and Prejudice from the 1920s. Beautiful. She verified the publisher page, checked for a signature or bookplate, and found none. She set it aside on a shelf she’d already cleared for high-value stock.
A signed copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. She held it up to the light, checking for altered pages or glued inserts, then smiled despite herself at the neat inscription inside.
Normal. Let it be normal.
After ten minutes, she paused and scanned the small pile she’d organized. These books would sell for good money—real money. Enough to pay a month’s rent, maybe two. Enough to help keep her shop afloat.
Not enough to justify an attack.
Not enough to explain why a masked man had slammed her against a wall and demanded a locket like his life depended on it.
The locket had done something to this town. To its buried history. To whoever guarded the Blackwoods’ secrets.
She slid a copy of Wuthering Heights onto the shelf and shifted her stance as her bruises tugged at her wrists. Pain reminded her she lived in a body, not just in her head. The ache grounded her, and she hated that she needed it.
The bell chimed.
“Took you long enough,” Annie called without looking up, relief already loosening her chest. “I thought your sergeant called you back.”
“Oh—I’m sorry to bother you.” A woman’s voice. Not Jack’s.
Annie’s stomach tightened. She lifted her head.
A well-dressed woman in her forties stood just inside the door with a little girl who couldn’t be more than six.
The child shifted from foot to foot, knees pressed together, face pinched in urgent misery.
The woman held a handbag that looked too expensive for the town—structured leather, polished hardware, the kind you bought in a department store in Nashville, not a small mountain shop.
“My daughter needs to use the restroom,” the woman said, tone pleasant, practiced. “I saw your lights on. Is there any way…?”
Annie hesitated only long enough to assess the child. The girl’s distress looked real.
“Of course,” Annie said, setting the book down. “Back through that door. First door on the right.”
“Thank you so much.” The woman’s smile flashed bright, but something about it stayed surface-level, like a mask worn too often. “Come on, sweetie.”
Annie watched them disappear down the short hall. Then she looked at the front windows again.
Jack stood outside somewhere—he had to. He wouldn’t leave her alone. Not after last night. Not after Eric.
She went back to the box, but the woman’s presence lingered in Annie’s peripheral awareness like an itch.
She tried to ignore it and let her hands keep moving.
Pages, covers, spines. She checked a slim journal with blank vellum pages and found nothing.
She opened a cracked poetry collection and shook it gently. Nothing fell out.
Routine steadied her.
Then the hall creaked. Footsteps approached.
The woman emerged with her daughter, who looked relieved enough to float.
“Thank you again,” the woman said. She didn’t head for the door. She lingered, eyes sweeping the shop—not the way a customer admired antiques, but the way an auditor assessed inventory. Her gaze paused on the boxes. On Annie’s laptop. On the open ledger where Annie tracked purchases.
Annie’s pulse ticked faster.
“I hope you don’t mind me asking,” the woman added, “but are you the owner? This shop is adorable.”
“Yes.” Annie kept her expression friendly. Neutral. “Annie Whitaker.”
She extended her hand. The woman clasped it—and squeezed with confidence that didn’t match the damsel-in-distress tone from a moment ago. Her grip felt practiced. Firm. Steady.
“Sarah Mitchell,” the woman said. “And this is Emma.”
“Nice to meet you,” Annie said, releasing the handshake.
Sarah’s gaze landed on the disarray—overturned furniture, scattered papers, the displaced display case. “I heard you had quite an ordeal last night. A break-in, or something?”