9 A Whisper from the Grave

The morning after she broke into Evelyn Holloway’s office, Jack slipped out of Raven’s bedroom after the sun came up. She’d lain with him for three hours. Three hours of holding her hand to his heart. Three hours of feeling his body pressed against hers as he slept. When she’d untangled her limbs from his, wincing at the light pouring in through his curtains, he’d sighed and reached for her.

“Stay. Please.”

“I can’t.” Two short words, and then she was climbing over the windowsill, heading for the garden below. For the first time in years, that garden didn’t flood her mind with painful memories. Raven was home. She could sneak onto his estate every night. Pull him into her arms. And then…

Jack froze as she reached the second-floor balcony. She was staring right into Lily’s bedroom, which, unlike Raven’s, did not have thick velvet curtains covering the window. Lily’s curtains were white and fluttery. All it took was the slightest touch of wind to part them, and then Jack was staring into a world of white furniture and painted pink roses.

Just like Evelyn’s office.

Lily was sprawled out on the bed. Through the gauze of a pale canopy, Jack saw her poring over the pages of a file, just like she’d promised. But there was something odd about the scene. Something Jack couldn’t put her finger on until Lily plucked a folder from beside her, tucking pages inside. They had only stolen copies of the files in Evelyn’s office. They hadn’t taken any of the originals. Why, then, was Lily sitting in the privacy of her bedroom, going through a folder marked Andrew Kane?

Jack could see the name clearly as Lily set the file on the bedside table next to the window. She stood from her canopy bed, stretched, and began pulling on a bulky white coat. As she buttoned it, Jack realized she was wearing gloves that matched the color of her hands almost perfectly.

Had she been wearing them all night?

Jack’s stomach clenched at the realization that her fingerprints were all over Evelyn’s office, but Lily’s likely weren’t. Should she sneak back in? Wipe the place clean? If she did, she might destroy actual evidence, and besides, breaking and entering in the daylight was likely to get her arrested.

Now Lily was tucking the Andrew Kane file into a little drawer in her bedside table and covering it with magazines. It wasn’t the greatest hiding place, but the police had already searched her house, and Lily’s family members had no reason to go poking through her things.