“Push through the pain, Jim. Is it your stomach rumbling, or...”

  “It’s her stomach,” I say, gasping. The pain has moved beyond my stomach, to other parts of my body, to other organs, methinks. These organs are unable to withstand the pain. They’re shutting down, painfully. I gasp and push through the pain.

  “Ease into it, Jim.”

  “It’s killing me, Jack.”

  “Not quite.”

  “This is how she died, alone and in pain, gasping, squirming, curled into the fetal position. I hear her crying out to her mother for help, for anyone’s help.” My eyes pop open as I find myself squirming nearly under the table. “My god.”

  “Yes?” says Jack.

  “It’s a figure a speech,” I say. Then cock my head, surprised at the information that comes to me next. “Jack, she cried out to me. She said my name. But I didn’t hear her. Only the footsteps. Jack?”

  “Yes?”

  “She was poisoned.”

  “You think?”

  I rest my head on the small circular table that looked like it might have been swiped from a Starbucks.

  “A shitty way to die,” I say, retracting my hand. Immediately, when I break the connection, the pain in my stomach subsides. I can’t imagine how terrible it must have gotten for her. A pain so great that it was followed by death. Unless...”

  “She passed away shortly after that, Jim.”

  “You’re reading my mind.”

  “It’s on your face, too: the horror that you know she experienced just last night.”

  “I want to find the person who did this to her,” I say. “And hurt them.”

  “Jim...”

  I turn to the empty chair. “Do you want me to hurt them, Claire? Because I can, and I will.”

  Now Jack is shaking his head. “She’s only looking for justice. Mostly, she wants you to find the little girl. She doesn’t want her death to be in vain, Jim. Her sister is waiting for her on the other side. But Claire will not go to the light until you’re done here.”

  “Her sister...”

  “Yes, Jim. She had a sister. Keep investigating. Keep going. The game is very much afoot.”

  If Jack was God, then of course he would know what happened. Come to think of it, I never mentioned Claire’s name and hadn’t yet brought up Dorian and his daughter. If God knew all of this, He knew the killer, too. He also knew why the murder happened and exactly how.

  And God had allowed all of it. With a wave of His finger, He could have stopped it, but He allowed it...

  “Free will, Jim. It always comes down to that.”

  “For the killer, maybe.”

  “And the victim.”

  “You can’t convince me she wanted to die.”

  “She came to the inn ready to give up her life for answers, Jim.”

  “Then Claire was very brave.”

  “She’s smiling, Jim. She says you’re very brave, too, and just the man to stop what’s going on at the inn.”

  “And what, pray tell, is going on at the inn?”

  “There have been two deaths there in the past ten years, Jim. Two sisters, in fact.”

  “Tell me what’s going on, please. I want to hurt them all so badly. Sorry, it’s how I think. An eye for an eye. You wrote that, God.”

  He makes a sound, pauses, then says, “The truth is out there, Jim, waiting to be found. She left behind a clue for someone.”

  “For me?”

  “For seekers of truth.”

  “Well, that would be me.”

  Jack meets my eyes, steady and kind. He hasn’t said the word ‘daughter,’ and he hasn’t said the word ‘trafficking.’ He hasn’t said anything, really, though he said everything.

  “Not every child belongs to the hand that holds its hand,” he adds. “Sometimes people rent people when they want to look respectable.”

  I sit back, throat tight. “That’s poetic,” I say. “But I was hoping for useful. If you are who I think you are, this would all be a lot easier.”

  “If I told you I was, you wouldn’t believe me,” he says. “If I told you I wasn’t, you wouldn’t believe that, either.” He nudges my coffee closer to me with a hairy knuckle. Who knew God was hairy? “Belief is a door you open from the inside.”

  “Well, the girl looked scared. Something is going on with that.”

  He sips his coffee, adds, “Children don’t carry fear that heavy unless someone else put it there. Watch the ones who claim guardianship, Jim. Sometimes the hand that guides is the same hand that cages.”

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about locked doors,” I say.

  Jack tilts his head, eyes on the ceiling beams like he’s listening to some cosmic narrator. “Remember, Jim… locks tell stories, too, but the story is always about the hand. Don’t fall in love with the hardware and miss the heartbeat.”

  “Ugh. Well, I’m waiting on the coroner’s report,” I say. “But I’m 100% it was poison, and I think Claire was staged on the floor, sand dollar and all, just to send the cops chasing down the wrong trail.”

  Jack lowers his gaze from the ceiling beams, his eyes settling on me with that half-smile of his.

  “Poison makes sense,” he says. “Quick, fairly quiet, efficient. But don’t mistake the stage for the play, Jim. They were sending a message. The sand dollar wasn’t a distraction. It was statement.” He spreads his hands, palms up. “But you already know that. You just want permission to trust your gut.”

  “I want a lot of things,” I say. “A six-pack of beer. A good night’s sleep. And a world where women don’t end up dead on carpets with weird shells in their mouths.”

  “The world is the world,” he says, and there’s no judgment in his words. Only sadness and a stubborn kind of hope. “But you can be you inside it, Jim. That counts for something.”

  I finish the coffee and wipe a crumb from the table. Outside, the gulls have moved on to heckling a man with a bulky paper bag. The mist thickens and billows in sheets, like giant curtains, or smoke from a fire. My phone vibrates with a text from Sanchez, then another from Cindy, the bubbles of their concern and competence popping through the tiny screen. I don’t look at the messages yet. Just don’t want to bring them both into this just yet.

  “She came here for her sister,” I say suddenly, a feeling coming over me. Had to be Claire. With it, comes a very unusual visual. “She was running from wolves in one story and walked into wolves from another. I can’t shake the feeling she knew something, even if she didn’t know what it was.”

  “Knowing comes in flavors,” Jack says. “Some you can name. Some you can only taste.”

  “Fran poured a different bottle for Claire at dinner,” I say, still thinking back to last night, seeing it all come into perfect clarity inside my mind’s eye. Was this Claire again? I didn’t know. How could I? Or was this my memory? Either way, there it was. I’d definitely seen it with my own eyes, even if I hadn’t connected it to her death. Wow, Fran? Now I see Claire make a face as she drinks from her glass. I also watch Fran squirrel the bottle away back into... the kitchen. It sports a yellow label...

  “Poison wears a thousand masks,” says Jack. “Some look like hospitality.”

  My jaw tightens. The warm coffee turns to ice in my stomach. I think of Caire’s severe grimace and the way Fran carried that bottle back to the kitchen like a holy relic. Then I think of Andrea/Claire lying neat and quiet, as if someone had arranged her for viewing, which they kind of did. I think of a peppermint candy five years past its sell-by date, waiting in a drawer for a sweet tooth that never came.

  “I’m going to need proof,” I say. “Not hunches. Not poetry. Something I can show the cops, something that can’t hide in the shadows.”

  “Check the places people clean last, Jim.”

  I think about that as Jack nods. He finally takes a bite of the scone, chews thoughtfully, then sets it down. “If you get turned around,” he says, “listen for a faint voice.”

  “I don’t hear voices,” I say.

  “You do,” he says. He looks at my hand. “You just call them instincts.”

  I suspect he means for me to reach out to Claire for help. Heck, maybe even her sister. I sure hope he doesn’t mean the ten-year-old girl, whom I still expect to find alive and well.

  We sit in silence a few minutes. The cafe is bright, warm, and full of ordinary noises: milk bring steamed, cups being stacked, the soft scrape of chairs, the murmur of voices, and some laughter mixed in. It feels indecent to carry the inn’s darkness back out into daylight, but I’m sensing this is where Jack and I will part... for now.

  But before he goes he says, “Stories don’t always hide in shadows, Jim. Sometimes, they’re framed right in front of you.”

  I squint at him. “You’re saying I should start interrogating the wallpaper now?”

  He smirks. “I’m saying some truths hang quietly, waiting for someone stubborn enough to pull them down.”

  At that exact moment, a chill runs across the back of my neck: cold, sharp, invasive. Claire again, I bet. The faint taste of bile rises in my throat. The poison, surely.

  I shove back from the table, pulse hammering. “Fine,” I mutter. “Let’s see what the hell the wall’s got to say.”

  When Jack stands, there isn’t so much as a creak in his seemingly old body. His gaze drifts past me to the door, where a puppy sits patiently, tail wagging like it knows a secret.

  Jack steps past me, bends down, and scoops the pup into his arms. The little thing melts against him. Jack chuckles low, rubbing his beard into its belly. The puppy squirms, kicking happily, as if it had been waiting all along just for him.

  I can’t help but notice a jar on the counter with the face of a young girl on it and the words: “Missing, please help us find Sissy Meyers.”

  The girl looked, if I had to guess, about ten years old. Not the girl who checked in with Dorian, but about the same age.

  Chapter Twelve

  Back at the Gull, I discover there’s a witness waiting for me.

  She’d checked out the day we arrived, but curiosity brought her back when word of the tragedy spread. Her name is Mrs. Ringwald, though in the lobby she’s simply “the bird lady,” thanks to the binoculars perpetually hanging from her neck. She’d spent three days at the inn watching gulls and cormorants along the rocky shore, a passion of hers ever since her sixteenth birthday, which, she tells me with a wry smile, everyone had forgotten.

  The afternoon before Claire’s death, Mrs. Ringwald had been heading upstairs with her journal when raised voices stopped her. They were coming from the far end of the hall, near Room Eleven.

  Mrs. Ringwald had slowed her step.

  Claire Holt was standing in the doorway, duffel bag over her shoulder, posture rigid, eyes blazing. Facing her was a tall man in a gray windbreaker: Dorian Finche. Beside him, a thin girl clutched a pink backpack to her chest as if it were the only solid thing in the world.

  The girl glanced up for only a second, her eyes locking with Claire’s. Then she pressed a hand to her throat and gave the faintest shake of her head. The movement was small, desperate, almost invisible.

  Mrs. Ringwald didn’t know what it meant. But Claire seemed to. She stiffened, lips parting. “Where’s her mother?” Claire demanded, her raised voice reaching Mrs. Ringwald’s ears.

  Had the girl just given some universal signal for help?

  Dorian’s tone was calm, practiced. “Traveling, and not your concern.”

  “She looks terrified. Don’t tell me she’s fine. Don’t lie to me. I’ll call the police!”

  Dorian stepped closer, lowering his voice. “You should mind your own business, hag.”

  But Mrs. Ringwald was close enough to hear Claire’s reply, her voice tight with fury.

  “This is my business. I know what you’re doing. And I won’t stay quiet.”

  For a moment, no one moved. The girl kept her eyes fixed now on the carpet. Dorian’s jaw flexed. His hand tightened on the suitcase handle until his knuckles went white.

  Then Fran appeared from the stairwell, her face pale, lips pinched. She whispered something to Claire too soft for Mrs. Ringwald to catch, then took her arm and guided her down the hall, away from Room Eleven.

  Mrs. Ringwald hurried to her own room, heart thudding. She wasn’t sure what she’d just witnessed, but she knew one thing: whatever it was, it wasn’t a normal argument.

  I thank Mrs. Ringwald and apologize for everyone who forgot her pivotal birthday, then went back to my room to Google what the hell a cormorant was.

  Chapter Thirteen

  My phone rings. Sanchez. I answer on the second ring and step out the back door of the inn. The air hits cold and salty, gulls wheeling overhead. Below, the surf smashes against the base of the cliff.

  “Was just thinking about you,” I say. “Well, mostly about tacos. But you were in there.”

  “Sounds racist.”

  “Hey, I’ve eaten more tacos than you.”

  He ignores me. “You want the good news or the ‘you’re in deep shit again’ news?”

  “Let’s start with the good.”

  “Andrea Clemmons—a.k.a. Claire Holt—reported her sister missing over five years ago.”

  “How’s that good news?”

  “Because her sister was last seen at the Gull’s Nest Inn. Isn’t that where you’re staying now?”

  “Yes, and whoa.”

  “Per the police report, she simply vanished,” says Sanchez.

  “I take it she was never found.”

  “Nope. And neither was her body. Case is still open.”

  “Sounds like we have a serial killer working nearby.”

  “Or right there in the inn.”

  “Remind me again why Claire was in the witness protection program.”

  “Sure, hold on. She was a former compliance officer at a hedge fund called Gatewatch Capital. She was the whistle blower in a billion-dollar embezzlement scheme. She testified, vanished, and reappeared at your inn with a sand dollar in her mouth. The guy she testified against, Vincent Dane, got fifteen years. Out on parole last fall.”

  That stops me.

  “Wait; he’s out?”

  “Early release for health reasons. But he’s been suspiciously spry. His PO can’t even track him half the time.”

  “And no one thought to warn the woman who helped put him away?”

  “Probably would have, except Andrea vanished from witness protection, and when that happens, they’re considered private citizens again. No more resources available. No more protection. Just a file and a note that says: ‘Doesn’t want to be found.’”

  I rub the back of my neck. “Someone found her.”

  “Yep. And if this was Dane’s move, it’s cleaner than anything he pulled during his finance days. No loose ends. No connection.”

  “Except for me.”

  Sanchez chuckles. “You’re not a connection, Jim. You’re a magnet. At least for cases like this.”

  “You’re not wrong.”

  “Want me to keep digging?”

  “Please. Anything on a guy calling himself Dorian Finche? Finche with an ‘e’ at the end. Hopefully just unusual enough…”

  “Finche?” Keys clack in the background. “Hold on… Yeah. Got a hit. Arrested years ago in a wire transfer scam in Phoenix. Nothing stuck. Used a phony ID. Small potatoes. Spent a year in prison.”

  “Anything about him being a dad to a ten-year-old girl?”

  More typing, then, “Negative. No mention of kids on prison intake. No dependents listed, no custody filings. Checked the usual public record databases, too. Nothing ties him to a daughter.”

  “So the girl with the pink backpack…”

  “Likely not his. At least, not on paper. Which means you might be looking at something a hell of a lot uglier than a dad on vacation. Be careful, Jim. You’re far from home, and that town is weird. If this gets bigger, don’t try to cowboy it alone. Call me and I’ll be there in a few hours.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Cindy’s in the room when I get back, tucked into the window nook with her legs curled beneath her and a vampire mystery novel open in her lap. She’s not reading, though. She’s been waiting. That’s never a good sign.

  She doesn’t say a word as I shut the door and kick off my shoes. And when I say kick off, I mean launch them up over my head and catch them behind my back. Real Cirque du Soleil stuff. She doesn’t blink. Doesn’t even smirk. Just sits there, quiet, steady, maybe deadly. Of course, I might be projecting. I give it five whole seconds before I cave.

  “Okay,” I say. “Before you say anything...”

  “I wasn’t going to say anything.”

  “Well...”

  “You were supposed to be reading next to me in bed, sharing a huge cinnamon roll—and by sharing, I mean, you eating most of it—but instead, you were out investigating on our vacation. Jim, are you even capable of taking a vacation?”

  “Of course I am. I’m relaxing right now, ain’t I? Breathing in the Zen, being in the moment, whatever that means, though I think I’m doing it now. Yes, I definitely am. Look, here I am in the moment! Just did it again and again. Did you miss it? No problem, here comes another moment.”

  She giggles. “All you’re doing is posing like Spider-Man and Superman and flexing.”

  “It’s how superheroes live in the moment. Why do you think they all do it?”

  She giggles.

  I grin and add, “Who could’ve predicted a murder at the very inn we’re staying at? The owners couldn’t have lucked out more... an ace detective staying right here under their roof. So yeah, a murder happened, and now I’m on the case. It is what it is.”

  “Are you even getting paid?”

  “They’re comping our stay here.”

  “A few hundred bucks?”

  “Try closer to a thousand. And on my budget, that’s a big deal.”

  “Okay, that’s something. I’ll quit thinking about myself. And you’re right, outside of Angela Lansbury, they did luck out that you happened to be here.”