Page 112 of The Case of the Missing Love Stone

The floor shifts under my feet.

Roman tightens his hold. “Easy.”

I force air through my lungs. “The bundle at my house was contaminated.”

“Low concentration,” Wes says. “Pepper thinks most of it had already washed into the soil by the time we collected it.”

Most of it. My ruined marigold bed swims into focus. Whoever placed the arrangement had woven my flowers through swamp grass, tied them with white thread, and tucked my grandmother’s words beneath them with enough care to keep the rain away.

They put GatorX in my flowers. “They expected me to touch it.”

Wes’s jaw flexes. “That is one possibility.”

I can’t think about the implications of that, or I’ll run screaming from the room. I force myself to move closer to the evidence wall, trying to think of anything else about this that makes sense. My grandmother’s handwriting slopes across the page, familiar enough to make my chest ache.

“Why these words?”

Roman looks at the copied note. “Maybe they wanted you to read those lines.”

“Do they mean anything together?” Wes asks.

“Maybe.” I trace the edge of the evidence sleeve without touching the paper. “Held too tightly could refer to a bond under strain. My grandmother wrote about pressure making damage worse.”

“Pressure from what?” Roman asks.

“She never used one word when six confusing ones would do.” My throat tightens. “It could mean control, a forced bond claim, or a pack refusing to release a bond that is already breaking.”

My eyes drop to the second line. Release worsens after false protection. Maribel said the bundle had calmed her. Hours later, Ellis felt like a stranger. “The relief came first,” I say. “Then the recognition failure.”

Wes steps beside me, and cedar cuts through the air. “You think that line describes the product.”

“I think it’s possible whoever circled it believes it does.” I look at him. “That is not the same as understanding what my grandmother meant.”

“And the consent mark?” Roman asks.

I read the sentence again. Consent mark fails when only one side agrees.

“It sounds like a bond that can’t settle unless both people choose it. Or a ritual mark. She wrote about both.” Frustration presses behind my eyes. “These are fragments. Whoever copied them removed the pages around them.”

“Which means context may be what they need from you,” Roman says.

That means the bundle was both a threat and a question. Whoever left it knew my family papers mattered. They knew I would recognize the handwriting. They knew I would try to finish the thought. And… they knew I would touch it. The idea settles cold in my stomach.

Wes’s phone vibrates. He reads the message, and the controlled set of his face sharpens.

“What?”

“Pepper says the greenhouse residue remained active after the rain. Weak, but active.” He looks at me. “She wants to know whether you’ve noticed anything off.”

The room tilts. My heart drops to my stomach.

Roman turns me toward him. “Scarlet?”

“They put it where I grow food. Where I walk barefoot.”

Wes is already moving. He grabs the camera case and checks the back door. “I’m securing the property again. No one goes near the greenhouse until Pepper clears it.”

The words should help.