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I took in the room again—and then spotted it. “Yes…” I said carefully. “I do.”

“Well?” he snapped.

I stepped forward, reached out, and plucked it from behind his ear. “Here.”

He blinked at me, then at the pen, then back at me again. “I’ll be damned,” he muttered.

“I also alphabetize,” I added. “And I can probably make sense of…whatever this is.” I gestured broadly to the room, which felt generous considering it might legally qualify as a paper avalanche waiting to happen. “And answer phones. And maybe…prevent you from being buried alive when those 1997 documents eventually fall.”

He stared at me for a long moment, then slowly pushed himself upright, joints cracking in protest. “You got references?” he asked.

My mind went blank in that specific, horrible way where every bad decision I’d ever made lined up and waved.

Boston. My ex. The fallout that had spread further and faster than I’d ever expected, until it felt like my name came with a warning label.

“No references,” I admitted.

“Good,” he said immediately. “Means no one’s claimed you yet.”

Relief slipped through me so fast it almost made me dizzy. “Definitely no claims.”

He shoved a stack of newspapers off the desk, clearing a space with a confidence that suggested he’d never once worried about what might be important.

“You can start by fixing that,” he said, pointing at the nearest pile. “And if anyone calls, you tell ’em we’re still reviewing documentation.”

“For what? From when?”

He shrugged. “All of it.”

I hesitated for exactly one second. Then I set my bag down. All right…so maybe this wasn’t a California legal office. But it was a job I could do for the next month.

And at this point, I was willing to survive on dust, confusion, and whatever the hell a forty-year zoning dispute about cows turned into.

“Okay,” I said, rolling up my sleeves. “Let’s make history.”

CHAPTER 13

SIENNA

Itold myself I wasn’t the kind of person who celebrated getting a job.

I was the kind of person who kept a job. Quietly. Competently. Without accidentally assaulting anyone with baked goods or getting drafted into senior citizen blood sport leagues.

Still…I’d lasted the day. And the old man—Albert—had even looked at me, nodded once, and said, “You’ll do.” Which felt like a glowing recommendation at this point in my life.

Maybe that counted as something, a small, fragile win in a town that had already tried to take me out twice before noon.

A reckless little voice in my head suggested I should celebrate it while it still existed, before the universe circled back and fixed the oversight. I smoothed my hands down my jeans as I stepped outside, my thoughts settling into something steadier. But the first thing I saw had them swirling into motion again.

The historical society, as it turned out, was right across the street from the Serial Killer Museum. I told myself I was moving toward it because of the new job, that I needed to know as much about Blackwood’s history as possible—the good, the bad, and the weird. Whether that was true, even I wasn’t sure. Regardless…something was drawing me into the place.

Maybe there was something almost…comforting about the idea of walking into a place where everything on display was worse than me.

People who had ruined lives. Destroyed things permanently. Left damage that couldn’t be laughed off or outrun or fixed with a new outfit and a promise to try harder tomorrow.

Maybe standing in the middle of that would shrink all I’d done in my life down to its proper size.

Or at least give my brain something else to latch onto besides…my past.