Ben scoffed. “Things I’m not sharing.”

“Someone is leaving her threatening notes. Someone on this island that only has about two hundred residents on it is after her.” Connor glanced toward the bedroom before continuing. “That means they’re close. She’s been lucky they haven’t moved in, but they will.”

“You want me to do a door-to-door search?”

Connor ignored the sarcasm in Ben’s voice. “Kind of.”

“Okay, I get it.” Ben visibly calmed. The tension ran out of him as he stood there, being far too sensible for the circumstances. “You want her safe. So do I. I’ll check with my contacts and call in for some help from Seattle, but we don’t have much to go on. I’m willing to give her some time to open up, time we’ll—I’ll—use to investigate.”

“What if she doesn’t have time? This person is watching. Could be unraveling.” He’d already lived this. One day his sister was fine and talking about going on a hike. The next, she was dead.

“This isn’t your fight, Connor. You’re here to relax and—”

“I’m not going anywhere.” The defiance in his voice shocked even him.

Footsteps caught Connor’s attention. Both men turned as Maddie walked out of the bedroom with a computer bag on one shoulder and a gym bag slung over the other.

She kept going until she stood in front of Connor. In a few quick moves she had the bags in her hands and shoved them into his stomach. “Here.”

One of the bags felt like she’d packed a piece of furniture in it. He poked at the zipper. “What’s in here?”

“Don’t push your luck.” She broke eye contact with Connor and looked at Ben. “You have one day to solve this.”

“That’s not possible and you know it. You’re going to stay with Connor and at some point you have to tell me something. Give me some direction. If your past is coming back to haunt you, I’ll need some details.”

“You know there are limits on what I can say.”

“What does that mean?” Connor thought his head would explode. They both treated threatening letters as no big deal no matter how much he yelled about it. “Maddie, come on.”

“My past might be unrelated.”

“Explain,” Ben said.

She sighed before answering. “I mean, I don’t see how this has anything to do with what happened before.”

It was the way she said it that made Connor wary. “Because?”

She stared right at him. “Because the people who tried to kill me last time are already dead.”

Chapter 11

Once Maddie dropped that verbal bomb, all talk of investigations and her past stopped. No surprise there.