Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 93002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
From the other side of the pontoon boat, I heard a low groan. I jumped off the step stool and made my way to Forrest. “What did you find?”
“Good news and bad news.”
“Yeah? Give me the good news first,” I said. I was usually a bad-news-first kind of girl, but I needed some good right now.
“The good news is I think this is where my father hid the clue,” Forrest said. “The bad news is it’s not here anymore.”
I got down beside him, looked beneath the bench, and saw what he meant. Someone, likely his father, had built a wooden box into the underside of the seat. Maybe it once had a locked door. Maybe it had been self-contained. But now, half of it was missing, and the splintered wood where two of the sides had been pulled apart was dulled with age.
Whoever had removed Alan Buckley’s clue from the box had done it a long time ago.
“What now?” I asked.
Forrest rolled to his feet and turned. Reaching out a hand, he pulled me up. When I stood, he didn’t let go. His fingers wrapped loosely around mine, and he squeezed. “I think now we go home, regroup, and figure out our next move.”
“Our next move?” I was ready to decipher a code, not investigate a mystery. I was also finding the pressure of his fingers on mine distracting, and I had to stay focused.
“We need to trace property ownership,” he said. “Whoever owns this place now may not be the same person who bought it from my mom. Maybe it was the prior owners who found the clue. Maybe my mom found it. We need to do some searching, ask some questions. But first, we need to get out of here. We’re trespassing, in case you forgot.”
“I didn’t forget,” I said. “I just wanted to find that clue.”
“I know.” He squeezed my fingers again. “We’ll find it.”
I swiped a glance around the boathouse. My heart felt tethered here. I didn’t want to leave without what we came for. It wasn’t here, and the boathouse was only a shell. But it didn’t feel empty. It felt filled with memories.
“Do you remember being here with your dad and your mom?” I asked.
His fingers threaded with mine. “Yeah. My dad had an old Woody, one of those wooden speedboats that look like they’re from the twenties. We’d come out on the weekends and drive around the lake.” He cleared his throat, his eyes seeing through the pontoon boat into the past. “My mom loved it. They were always happy here. He taught me to fish.”
Forrest gave a slow look around, then turned for the door.
I glanced through the window to see the SUV missing from the driveway, the front porch of the cottage, and the lawn empty. “I don’t see anyone out there.”
Forrest looked down at the handle he’d broken. “Hold on.” Pulling his wallet from his back pocket, he fished out a bill and set it on the bench beside the door. At my look of surprise, he said, “I’m not a complete asshole. I broke their lock. The least I can do is leave money to cover the damage.”
He wasn’t a complete asshole. I was beginning to think he wasn’t an asshole at all.
Watch yourself, Sterling, I lectured myself. Of course, he’s not a complete asshole. You wouldn’t have fallen for him in the first place if that’s all he was. It doesn’t make him a nice guy. Doesn’t make him worth the risk.
I wasn’t going to let anyone hurt me like that again. Especially not the man who’d done it the first time.
Forrest pushed the door open. I followed him out, blinking in the bright sun. My eyes focused, and I jerked to a halt in front of the man I’d seen earlier getting out of the gray sedan.
“Well…what do we have here?” he asked, his sharp eyes locked on Forrest’s face. “Trespassers?”
Uh-oh. Busted.
Chapter Thirteen
FORREST
“Can I help you two?”
I looked into the smiling face of a man my height, about the age my dad would’ve been if he were still alive. Bushy white hair, white mustache, and wire-rimmed glasses around alert gray eyes. He was tanned, maybe from a summer boating on the lake, and something about him tugged at the back of my mind.
“I, uh,” Sterling began. “We’re sorry. We didn’t mean any harm.” She gestured to me and gave the man her most stunning smile. “Forrest’s dad used to own this place. We were in the area, and the nostalgia got to him. We wanted to stop by—”
Sterling’s voice cut off as the man’s friendly but sharp eyes landed on her. Out of instinct, I reached out, winding my arm around her shoulders, feeling the need to protect her from this unknown threat, though I wasn’t sure the smiling man in front of me constituted a threat. His gaze shifted to me, assessing.