“Not sure,” she admitted as the buckle snapped into place just as Rivers started the engine. “Everything checks out.” She chewed on her lower lip. “I don’t know . . .”

“Too much of a coincidence that her brother works for James?”

“She seemed to think so.”

“But—?” He drove onto the side street and flipped on the wipers.

“But Riggs Crossing is a small town. James Cahill is a major employer in the area. It’s not that odd.”

He squinted against the headlights from oncoming traffic. There was something about the conversation that nagged at him, scratched at his brain, but he didn’t know what. Maybe it wasn’t so much what was said as how it was said.

As he turned onto a main road leading east out of the city, he wished he could’ve had a few minutes alone in Jennifer Korpi’s classroom, to stand amid the jingle bells, paper angels, and Bible verses, to delve deep and pick up any dark images submerged beneath all the Christmas cheer. Something didn’t feel right in there, but he doubted if the gatekeeper of St. Ignatius Elementary, Sister Rosemarie, would allow him inside or give him free rein in the classroom, and he wasn’t about to break in.

He didn’t have to.

He had her tension ball in his pocket.

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 32

Willow summoned her strength.

Then quietly, holding her breath, slipped through the back door of James’s house.

Her heart pounded, and her pulse was jumping as she stood in the kitchen, straining to hear even the smallest of noises, any sign of life within the darkened interior. Not from James; she knew he was at the hospital because of Gus’s accident—the news of him nearly cutting off his hand had spread like wildfire through the shop, inn, and Christmas tree farm. But what about the dog?

Biting her lip, she stepped noiselessly across the hardwood. She half-expected the shepherd to come barking and snarling from some hidden corner of the house, but she heard no sound of toenails clicking rapidly on the floor, no low menacing growl, just the hum of the refrigerator and the soft rumble of an old furnace pushing air through the ancient vents.

She eased into the kitchen and through the dining area.

Slowly, her eyes adjusted to the half-light, a bit of illumination from a front porch light seeping through the windows to give the interior a ghostly glow.

She had a right to be here.