Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Two hours earlier.

11:54 p.m.

The old front door was a better barometer than the weather forecast. When the weather was damp, Kate Lange’s door let her know. And judging by the door’s orneriness, it had been very damp while she was away.

Kate gave the door an extra push. It yielded with a lurch. She half-fell into the house, the rolling suitcase crashing into the back of her heels.

Seventy-five pounds of jubilant husky threw himself against her.

“Alaska! Hey, boy!” She dropped her purse, wrapping her arms around the dog that she had rescued when she first moved into this house. Clear blue husky eyes gazed at her with frantic relief that she had returned home. “I missed you.” She kissed his silky fur.

A blur of black barreled off the sofa, launching against her hip in an explosion of pug excitement. His paws scrabbled for her attention. “Hello, Foo!” With one arm around the husky—who delicately nibbled his devotion on her ear lobe—she scratched the velvety head of the pug.

This was a welcome that would never get old.

Even if she was still bemused that the pug Foo Dog temporarily resided in her house.

A week before her departure for Italy, Finn Scott—dog walker and home renovator extraordinaire—had arrived on her doorstep with a hammer in his back pocket, two coffees on a takeout tray, and a drowsy looking black pug under one arm.

Kate recognized the dog. He belonged to Kenzie Sloane, celebrity tattoo artist to the masses, Finn’s former lover—and the woman who had almost killed Kate just days before.

Kate had eyed man and pug warily. “Why are you bringing Kenzie’s dog here?”

Finn’s gaze was pained, but unapologetic. “She asked me to look after him while she was in jail.”

Kate’s interpretation of Kenzie’s request was a little less charitable: Kenzie, never one to miss taking advantage, had zeroed in on Finn’s soft heart.

And now Finn had to choose between his apartment or the pug, because his landlord threatened to evict him due to the building’s ‘no pets’ policy. Naturally, Finn chose the pug. Kate hoped it was because of his feelings for the dog and not the owner. What else could she do but offer him one of the empty bedrooms in her house? She had the space.

She reluctantly had to concede that the timing had been perfect down to the hour. She had just had tea with her elderly neighbor Enid Richardson. “You need a change of scene,” she’d said to Kate. “I’ve been worried about you. You seem to be a ghost of yourself.”

Ha. A ghost. How true. But it was the ghost of others from her life that kept her up at night. The Body Butcher. Her sister Imogen. John McNally.