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“He wore a cheap suit and carried a fake leather briefcase. Which I only noticed because one of the other residents—Mrs. Ivy—noticed. She’s a bit stuck up,” she adds. “But he really did seem kind. Wore a happy smile for everyone.”

“Last name?” I ask her.

She shakes her head. “But I can check the logs at work if you want.”

“No, I’ve got a guy who can figure it out. You need to keep as much distance from this as possible,” I tell her. The twisting in my stomach grows. Something about this isn’t sitting right with me.

And I get the feeling there’s a whole lot more going on.

“Do you think I’m in danger?” Parker asks, face paling slightly.

“Right now, there’s no reason to believe you are. You’ve been going to work like normal, which means if they wanted to hurt you, they would have had plenty of opportunities.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better,” she says.

“Just keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary. Anyone following you, someone new trying to come into your life.” Reaching into my pocket, I withdraw a business card. “If you see anything, call me.”

“Thanks. Okay, yeah.” She takes a deep breath, then sets the card aside and turns back to Dahlia. “I’m so sorry this happened to you, Dahlia.”

“Thanks.”

“If you need me, you know where to find me. Just avoid Pine Meadow,” she replies.

“Actually, I intend to do just the opposite,” Dahlia says. “If they have answers for me, I want them.”

I stare at her, appreciating the strength radiating from her.

A lot of people would have wanted to bury their heads in the sand and avoid any type of place that might be dangerous.

But Dahlia seems ready to jump into shark-infested waters head-first, if it means finding the truth.

And until we do, I’ll be right there with her.

Chapter 14

Dahlia

As we park in front of Café Bean in the late afternoon, my mood has sunk pretty close to the pits. After leaving the gym, I’d pretty much given up hope we were going to find out any real answers.

So far, no one has been able to glean anything from my life over the last two weeks that would have led to me winding up in that river. How is that possible? How can this happen to me, yet there were apparently no signs?

“You doing okay over there?” Ryker asks.

I turn toward him to find that he’s watching me intently. “Just feeling a bit down. My grandfather would call it an Ecclesiastes day.”

Ryker snorts. “I like that.”

I smile, appreciating his amusement. “Yeah. He would also tell me that even Ecclesiastes days are full of hope, and I need to find myself some.”

“Well, I couldn’t agree more.”

“We have no answers, Ryker. We’ve been at this all day, and aside from feeling like I gained a bit more traction in getting my own life back in order, we have no answers. It’s just frustrating.”

“How do you figure?”

“Huh?”

Ryker arches a brow, then turns in his seat to partially face me. “We now know that Mr. Prescott had a visitor in the week before he passed, right?”