A quick flip of the notepad confirmed it as the phone message tablet she suspected. Scooting the chair back a few inches, she opened the top drawer to find the intern’s copy of the Associated Press Stylebook, an unopened package of pens, a shrink-wrapped pack of notebooks, and a few snack-size bags of pretzels.

  Her stomach roiled at the sight of her beloved snack and she willed herself to breathe deeply. She didn’t have time to be sick. Not with Sam being gone and Ryan’s release needing to be orchestrated . . .

  “Ryan’s release,” she whispered aloud, then stopped to ponder the irony of her own words. Twenty-four hours earlier, she was every bit as fatigued by the intern’s cutthroat personality as her coworkers, his demeanor and his tactics more than a little grating. Yet, despite all of those known factors, she couldn’t help but shake the nagging sense—the downright certainty, in fact—that Ryan was no more responsible for the Ocean View Inn owner’s death than she was.

  Why he was at the scene with the bloodied murder weapon in his hands, though, was anyone’s guess. Especially hers.

  “What were you doing there, Ryan?” With a quick glance over her shoulder to see if anyone had heard her, she yanked open the second drawer and peered inside. Sure enough, smack dab in the center of the otherwise empty drawer was the slightly tattered cover of Ryan’s latest notebook. She plucked it from its resting place, closed the drawer, and carried it to the darkened conference room that did little more than host the weekly staff meetings. The roomy table and door-promised privacy was exactly what she needed to identify and follow Ryan’s trail.

  Somewhere in the back of her head she heard the little voice instructing her to call Mitch and turn the book over to the police. But a different, louder voice convinced her it was a call that could be made in an hour just as easily as it could be made at that moment.

  She flicked on the overhead light, closed the door, and sank into the chair normally inhabited by her mentor. This time, though, the choice of seat wasn’t dictated by her stint as Sam’s temporary replacement but, rather, her desire to channel some of his coolheaded thinking.

  “Layer by layer, Elise. Somewhere along the way you’ll uncover just the right gem to tell your story.”

  Closing her eyes briefly, she let the memory of his voice steady her breath. So many times over the past seven years he’d shared that very sentiment in an effort to encourage her to do her best work. It didn’t matter whether she was covering a heated town council issue or a feature piece that spanned multiple generations, those words, that advice, had panned out every single time.

  Slowly, she reached out, opened Ryan’s notebook, and stared down at the chicken scratch that filled the first page. The words themselves weren’t complete words at all. Instead, they were a series of letters—sometimes the very beginning of a word, sometimes abbreviations—designed to jog Ryan’s memory once he was back at his computer and ready to write. It was, for lack of a better description, an unofficial shorthand, often made up on the fly, for the sole purpose of accuracy without forsaking speed.

  Fortunately for Elise, the shorthand Ryan employed was more about dropping off insignificant letters than some nonsensical code worthy of a professional decoder. As a result, she was able to glean a few important facts . . .

  First, he’d secured a decent quote from Bert Simpson, the owner of Ocean Point Laundromat, just moments after discovering someone had walked off with three of his large-capacity dryers.

  Second, he’d noted the robber’s point of entry as a screen window off the back of the building and the absence of any deterrent lighting in the alley.

  Impressed, she turned the page and reviewed more of the intern’s notes, including those made during his initial fact-checking phone call with Mitch and subsequent follow-ups with the Laundromat owner. The more relaxed pace of the off-scene portion of Ryan’s investigation enabled him to write in a more traditional manner, bringing his penmanship down to a smaller size and allowing for more information on a single sheet.

  The next page was back to the shorthand and coincided with the second robbery. This time, the new espresso machine at Beachside Bakery was the target. Again, he had a quote from the owner, the point of entry being a smashed window panel in the back door, and an underlined and starred notation about the call coming in from a nearby home owner.

  A follow-up call with Mitch the next day yielded a quote about the importance of the community’s help in lessening crime.

  She flipped through a few empty pages before coming to details of the third robbery, a crime that had seen Lazy Day Reads lose an entire shelf of signed first editions from some of the country’s top authors—first editions that had been donated in the wake of Hurricane Geraldine and its devastating effects on the tiny yet beloved bookstore.

  Here, like in the two before it, the point of entry—again, a back door—was noted, the owner was quoted, and Mitch was contacted for an official response. But this time, the missing items were written a second time, followed by those of the two previous robberies. To the right of the list was written a single word: photograph. Next to the word were three underlined question marks and three distinct dates.

  Turning around in her chair, she took in the wall calendar just over her left shoulder. The last of the three dates mentioned coincided with the current month’s first publication date. A lift of the page revealed a connection between the two remaining dates and issues released during the previous month.

  Again, she looked back at Ryan’s notebook and the list of items pulled out and framed by a single word.

  “Photograph,” she read aloud once, then twice, her legs scooting back her chair before the refrain was even cold on her lips. Ryan had found something, or, at the very least, suspected he’d found something.

  Was it the connection that had led Ryan to the Ocean View Inn? The reason he’d found Joe Wiley’s body before anyone else?

  Those were the questions that propelled her to open the conference room door and make her way back to her desk and the stack of newspapers she kept in a basket to the left of her chair. Squatting down, she rifled through the top three papers to reach the issues that coincided with the dates listed in the margin of Ryan’s notebook. When she’d located the papers she needed, she returned to the conference room and spread them across the table in chronological order by date and Ryan’s notes.

  Page by page she made her way through the first of the three papers, the headlines they boasted insignificant against the coming week’s tale of murder and an apprehended newspaper intern. She was halfway through the paper when she allowed her gaze to travel back to Ryan’s notebook and the connecting word that had caught her eye in the first place.

  Photograph . . .

  Shaking her head, she started over from the beginning, making her way through the issue, this time bypassing the articles in favor of the pictures tasked with bringing the words to life.

  There were the usual suspects, of course—the local kid who’d been recognized for some sort of achievement, another shot of the post-storm rebuilding process, and the latest subject of Karen’s Famous Footprints Across Ocean Point series. For the briefest of moments she allowed herself to take in the candid snapshot of the retired ballplayer who’d passed away six months earlier while simultaneously remembering the swarm of teenage girls who’d insisted on touching Karen’s hand after the feature reporter revealed the name of the eighteen-year-old international heartthrob who’d walked their beach mere days before Geraldine blew into town.

  She savored the effects of her smile and turned the page, her gaze immediately falling on the photograph halfway down the page—a picture that showed Bert Simpson beaming proudly beside one of the same high-capacity dryers stolen from his Laundromat less than a month later.

  Not for the first time since the robbery, she found herself shaking her head and questioning the moral fiber of a person who’d steal from someone who’d been through what Bert Simpson had been through.

  Like many of his fellow business owners up and down Main Street, Bert had lost everything in the hurricane—his home and his source of income. Yet, because of his loyalty to Ocean Point and the residents he considered friends as well as customers, he’d stuck it out, opting to stay and rebuild rather than head inland to a more weather-friendly location.

  Two days after his grand reopening, his shop was robbed, three of his four high-capacity dryers stolen right through his own back door.

  Aware of an all-too-familiar anger building inside her chest, Elise set the photograph in question off to the side and reached for the second paper, the uncertainty she’d felt while searching the first no longer in play. Sure enough, about midway through the paper, she found herself looking down at a picture of Bonnie Ryder and the brand-new espresso machine the bakery owner was eager to share with her customers when she finally reopened for business.

  A quick check of Ryan’s list confirmed the machine as the item stolen during that robbery.

  She felt the chill skitter its way down her spine, the connection Ryan had found between the robberies suddenly clear. The third paper noted in his notebook depicted a photograph of Liam Thompson standing outside Lazy Day Reads with a few of the keepsake books he’d received from famous authors—books that subsequently disappeared out his back door days later.

  Every single one of the burglarized businesses had been featured in the Ocean Point Weekly with an accompanying photograph touting the very item targeted in the crime.

  It was a realization that both sickened and excited her at the same time, with the latter quickly pushing the former to the side.

  Ryan had indeed made a connection.

  A strong one.

  But was it enough to—

  She sat up tall as her mind raced ahead to the article she herself had written as the previous week drew to a close. In fact, Joe Wiley and his decades-old bed-and-breakfast had been set to run in Sunday’s paper before being placed on hold to accommodate an advertisement the paper couldn’t afford to turn down.

  Aware of the lump building in her throat, she thought back to that story, the opening she’d slaved over for hours now whispering its way across her lips.

  “If walls could talk, they’d have a lot to say at Ocean View Inn. In fact, if given even half a minute they could surely utter the dreams of some, the fears of others, celebrations they’d witnessed, and the names of celebrities they’d hosted. But, like their owner, Joe Wiley, they’re not talking.”

  Dropping her head onto her hand, she couldn’t help but recall the terminology Joe had used when refusing to share specifics about his former guests. Innkeeper-guest confidentiality, as he coined it, was a belief he took as seriously as the existence of the inn itself—an inn he’d opened with his elderly mother some fifty years earlier and continued to run after her passing.

  Many in Ocean Point had hypothesized the inn wouldn’t reopen after the storm on account of Joe’s advanced age and people’s hesitancy over vacationing in a town so damaged and broken. But he’d surprised those who’d counted him as a business loss by coming back, the minimal damage to the inn’s upper floor not enough to deter a man who’d made guest service his life’s work.

  The only thing she couldn’t remember was which picture they’d chosen to accompany the article . . .

  Gathering the newspapers and Ryan’s notebook into her hands, Elise exited the conference room once again, this time making her way toward the messiest desk in the entire building.

  “What’s shakin’, boss lady?” Dean lifted his field of vision from the pile of photos on his desk long enough to follow his greeting with a yawn.

  On any other day, she’d have taken a moment to come up with a reply worthy of the photographer’s exceptional barbing capabilities, but this time she let it go. There would be time to joke around with her coworker another day.

  “What picture did you end up running alongside my story about Joe and the Ocean View Inn? Do you remember?”

  This time, when he lifted his gaze again, it was with surprise. “You mean the one on the grand reopening that isn’t going to happen now thanks to Ryan?”

  She considered arguing the intern’s premature conviction but let it go, her focus on the question at hand. “I just need to know which picture, Dean.”

  For a moment she thought he was going to launch into his usual joke-first, work-second mentality, but, after a lengthy look, he merely shrugged and motioned her toward his computer. Three clicks later, Joe Wiley’s gentle smile was trained on them from a crystal-clear image that had him standing alongside the inn’s open front door, the elderly man’s widespread arm welcoming back future guests. To Joe’s left was the original Ocean View Inn shingle sign that had managed to survive Geraldine’s fury with little more than a few scratches and dents.

  She blinked back the threat of tears as she drank in the victim’s big blue eyes and welcoming aura, his senseless loss still difficult to comprehend. “Are-are you sure this is the one you opted to go with?”

  Dean looked from Elise to the image and back again, shrugging as he did.

  “You mean the picture I’d opted to go with in the event the article actually ran?”

  She felt her mouth go dry as Dean’s words underscored something she already knew yet had failed to rationalize with everything else. Joe’s story hadn’t run. It had been bumped. Yet, following the pattern of the three previous stories in the Back from the Edge series, the inn had been robbed, or, more accurately, had been the target of an attempted robbery gone horribly wrong.

  Was it possible that its intended inclusion in the series was merely a coincidence? After all, the reopening of the inn was public knowledge throughout the Ocean Point community with or without her article. Then again, why was it only the businesses they featured that were being robbed? Other, smaller businesses were opening their doors again on a near weekly basis without the kind of fanfare they’d bestowed on the likes of Beachside Bakery, Lazy Day Books, and Ocean Point Laundromat.

  “Do you know if Ryan did anything with layout on Friday?”

  Dean’s focus never left her face. “Yeah, he stuck in his two cents as usual. He saw this picture and your article, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  Indeed it was.

  Swallowing harder, she backed away from Dean’s computer. “Okay, thanks. I-I’ll leave you to whatever it is you were doing.”

  She turned to leave, only to stop at the feel of the photographer’s hand on her arm. “It’s not your fault Ryan did this, ’Lise. Please tell me you know that, right?”

  Chapter Five

  1:35 p.m.

  On some level she knew Dean was right. If Ryan did, in fact, kill Joe Wiley in a robbery gone wrong, it was his choice. If he was so stuck on creating news he could then cover, that reflected on him, not her. But still, she couldn’t help but feel responsible for the actions of an intern she’d picked from an application pool of more than a dozen.

  She turned the corner at Main Street and Second Avenue and headed toward the familiar white brick building two blocks away, her mind instantly revisiting the many reasons she’d settled on Ryan.

  He was eager.

  His writing ability was more than a little impressive.

  His grades at the local college were top-notch.

  And he knew his way around an interview like a seasoned professional.

  The aggressive personality he’d shown since officially getting the job had been unexpected, of course; yet despite that, she still felt as if she’d hired the right candidate.

  Her pace quickened as she crossed First Avenue and continued south, the click of her heels against the recently pored sidewalk dull against the backdrop of self-recriminations making yet another loop through her head.

  How could she be such a horrible judge of character once again?

  How could she be blind to yet another killer?

  You’re not.

  She stopped and inhaled sharply, waited for the unfamiliar voice in her head to repeat itself.

  But there was nothing.

  She continued walking, the front door of the Ocean Point Police Department growing closer with each passing step. She couldn’t say for sure whether Ryan was a murderer or not. Yes, he had a bloodied knife in his hand when police arrived at the inn in the wee hours of the morning, but something didn’t sit right. Ryan was smart. He was also passionate about writing, passionate about becoming a world-renowned reporter. People with that kind of intelligence and passion didn’t give up on their dreams lightly.

  At the door to the department she stopped, took a deep breath. Too many questions were spinning through her thoughts—questions that only one person could answer.

  Yanking open the door, she stepped into the station and crossed to the receptionist’s desk.

  “Hi, Sally. Is Mitch in?”

  The pretty blonde smiled and nodded then hit the button on the side of her desk that released the lock on the door and allowed Elise access to the station’s inner sanctum. Once past the door, she followed the main hallway until it led to her favorite office in the whole building.

  Peeking around the corner, she couldn’t help but smile at the sight of her husband bent over an open folder on the top of his desk.

  “Hey, handsome, got a second?”

  Mitch’s head snapped upward to reveal the brown eyes and dimples she treasured. The legs of his chair scraped across the linoleum floor of his office as he rose to his feet and made his way around the metal desk to claim a kiss. “Are you here to whisk me away for a late lunch?”

  Oh, how she wanted to say yes, to take credit for such a spontaneous romantic gesture they both sorely needed. But she couldn’t. Not at that moment, anyway.

  She glanced at the floor then back at Mitch, shaking her head as she did. “No.”

  His dimples disappeared. “Is something wrong? Did-did you . . . start?”

 

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