Kennedy gasped. I spun to her and touched a finger to my lips, mouthing, “Quiet.”

She nodded.

We progressed into the kitchen where drawers had been opened, their contents haphazardly tossed about, and the appliances and coffee-making equipment from the counter had been knocked onto the floor. I nearly whimpered at the sight of my beloved coffee machine damaged beyond repair.

I guided Kennedy into each of the two spare bedrooms to find that they had received similar treatment. In the bathroom, someone had written “BACK OFF” on the mirror in what looked to be black permanent marker.

But my bedroom was the most shocking. Paper of some sort had been torn into confetti-sized pieces and spread over nearly every surface with the majority of it on the bed. In the center of the mattress, with a pair of scissors buried in its cover, was a photo album.

Kennedy cried out, racing past me to reach for the album. Seeing that she meant to touch it, I grabbed her around the waist and stopped her before she could.

“Let me go!” she screamed, kicking at me. “That’s my scrapbook!”

“Stop,” I ordered, as calmly as I could. “You can’t touch it, or you might mess with any evidence the stalker left.”

“But that’s… Oh my God.”

She buried her face in my shoulder. A moment later, a sob wracked her body. My heart wrenched, and I held her close, murmuring comforting words that were meaningless when I didn’t know exactly what had upset her. Clearly the book meant something.

“I’ve got you,” I said, brushing my lips across her cheek. “Why don’t you tell me what it is?”

She pulled away and looked up at me with watery, red-rimmed eyes. “After I left Destiny Falls, I made a scrapbook about our first year together. I was going to give it to you when I came back, but then the accident happened, and I never got the chance to. I kept it and used to look at it when I needed to be reminded of good memories.”

My innards clenched at the thought of her carefully creating a book that chronicled our relationship, her heart full of hope, then having to pack it away when her life turned upside down. I hated that she’d been in that position, but I was glad she’d found strength in memories of us.

I scanned the shredded paper, noticing glimmers of color among the wreckage. Flashes of green and skin tone. “You kept it all this time?”

“And brought it here with me,” she confirmed, her words like a jolt of electricity to my heart. “I was keeping it in the closet in my bedroom, which means the stalker was in the cottage.”

Oh fuck.

“How could they have gotten in without setting off the alarm?” I asked. “When was the last time you saw the scrapbook? Could they have stolen it weeks ago?”