I decided to put it back down and leave it where it lay. If the woman who lived here had dropped it for some reason, then she would want it again.

But it was strange the way an innocuous accessory unnerved me. Something seemed off about the glove being out in the middle of the foyer in the empty and quiet house.

I needed to get out.

I went down the short hallway to the master bedroom. When I got there, the door was closed. It seemed strange to me that someone would leave their bedroom door closed when they weren’t home.

Maybe everyone did it. Maybe I’d be the only one to find it odd. But it unnerved me just as the random dropped glove had.

Then I wondered if there’d be an unexpected problem. Would the bedroom door be locked somehow? Something Blake hadn’t thought of and didn’t have an answer to?

I swallowed hard and reached for the knob. It turned freely, and the door swung open.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Bright light spilled through the large bedroom window that faced the street, creating a rectangle pattern across the bed.

I took a step inside and my foot brushed against something. I looked down and saw clothes scattered across the floor. A lot of clothes.

The sheets and the comforter were bundled up and halfway falling off the mattress. The air felt close and stuffy.

The room stood in stark contrast to the neatness and order of the rest of the house. But, then again, if someone was going to have one messy space, it might as well be the bedroom. It would explain the closed door, to prevent any visitors from seeing it.

The dresser sat on my left, so I started that way, gingerly stepping over the strewn clothes. As I approached the dresser, I saw that several of the drawers were open, and more clothes spilled over their edges.

My foot bumped against something solid.

I looked down and took a step back. Something was buried under the clothes.

I would have gone on, not needing to know what object—a shoe, a book—sat beneath the mess. But some of the light reflected off something buried in the clothes, so I took a closer look.

It took a moment, but I saw the light was reflecting off a watch. I saw the second hand had stopped, the other hands frozen at an incorrect time: twelve fifteen. The crystal was cracked. Some part of me couldn’t stand the thought of the watch being on the floor, exposed to the possibility of someone coming along and stepping on it, further crunching the face or destroying the watch altogether.

So I bent down to pick it up and place it on the dresser.

But when I pulled on the watch, I felt resistance. That’s when I realized the watch was attached to someone’s wrist.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN