style="font-size:15px;"> Jack rocked back in his chair, lifting the hand-carved front legs from the floor as the possibilities wound through his brain.
Truth was he wouldn’t sleep again until he’d held that postcard in his own hand.
He blew out a slow breath.
Christmas.
On the East Coast.
In the cold.
He supposed there were worse things in life. Hell, he knew there were.
He pulled up the Weather Channel Web site and keyed in the zip code for the Don’t Say a Word post office box. Then Jack leaned even closer to the monitor and studied the forecast.
Cold, cold and more cold.
Jack hated the cold.
Almost as much as he hated Christmas.
“Ho, ho, ho,” he muttered as he dialed his chief’s home number.
The senior officer answered on the second ring, and Jack didn’t waste a moment on niceties, clicking back to the image of Melinda Simmons’s smiling, alive face as he spoke.
“I’m going to need some time off.”
ABBY CONROY COVERED the ground between her post office box and the Don’t Say a Word office in record time. The morning air was cold and raw, teasing at the possibility of a white Christmas the region hadn’t seen in years.
“Good morning, Mrs. Hanover,” she called out to an elderly woman walking a pair of toy poodles, each dressed in full holiday outerwear complete with tiny Santa hats and jingle bell collars.
Now there was something worthy of confession.
Abby stifled a laugh and pulled the collar of her wool pea coat tighter around her neck.
The local retail merchants’ association had gone all-out this year in an effort to draw tourists into the Trolley Square section of town from the nearby attractions such as Winterthur, Brandywine Art Museum and Montchanin.
Thanks to their hard work, the Christmas holiday proclaimed its approach from every available storefront, lamppost and street sign.
Good thing Abby loved the holidays—or should she say, had loved the holidays.
This Christmas marked an anniversary she’d just as soon forget, but knew she never would.
Abby shoved the depressing thought far into the recesses of her mind and glanced at the stack of postcards in her hands.
She’d started the Don’t Say a Word online secret confession site just shy of a year earlier, and as the site’s anniversary approached, so had the number of “secrets” shared anonymously by the public each week.
Sure, the profile in People magazine hadn’t hurt. Sadly, it had also drawn the phonies and the cranks out of the woodwork.
Whereas Don’t Say a Word had started small and had grown via word of mouth, helping those who truly needed to share something from their past in order to ease their souls, the recent media attention had drawn confessions above and beyond anything Abby had ever imagined, including last week’s.
She tightened her grip on the mail as she pictured the card featured in this week’s blog. Typically she chose three or four for the blog, but last week she’d chosen only one.
I didn’t mean to kill her.
Anger raised the small hairs at the back of her neck. She’d shown the card to a local police detective before she’d published the photograph—an older black-and-white shot of a young woman sporting a ponytail and huge grin.
Even the officer had shared her first reaction. Someone wanted his or her fifteen minutes of fame and had decided to take the sensational route to get there.
Well, perhaps Abby had made a mistake by giving the so-called confession space on the very public blog, but she’d wanted to call attention to the sender’s callousness.
The site and service were for people who spoke from the heart, not for someone who found sending a card like last week’s feature amusing.
She’d been a bit harsh in her blog, but so what? There were thousands of people out there with secrets, secrets that needed to be told in order to ease the keeper’s heart and mind. Abby wasn’t about to tolerate anyone’s sick humor at the expense of her site or her readers.
Her business partner, Robert Walker, had wanted her to toss the card in the trash, but she hadn’t been able to. Matter of fact, instead of archiving the card in the office files after she’d written her blog, she’d tucked it into her briefcase, where it still sat as a reminder of her commitment to preserve her site’s integrity.
Abby crossed a side street then hopped up onto the sidewalk running alongside her office building. The heels of her well-loved boots clicked against the cobblestone walkway as she headed for the entrance.
She glanced again at the stack of cards in her hand, but instead of flipping through them, she tucked them into her coat pocket. The cold had found its way beneath the heavy wool and under her skin. The only thing she cared about right now was finding the biggest, hottest, strongest cup of coffee she could.
“Good morning, Natalie,” she called out to the receptionist as she entered the building.
The young woman looked up with a grin, her blunt-cut hair swinging against her slender neck. “Cold enough for you?”
Abby faked a shudder as she headed for the office kitchen.
Theirs was a shared space. One receptionist and administrative assistant for several tenants, allowing each company to share basic expenses with several other start-ups. Perfect for the work she did.
A few moments later, she headed toward her office space, steaming cup of coffee in hand, just as she liked it, heavy on the cream, no sugar.
She reached into her pocket to pull out the mail, but stopped in her tracks when she realized someone had reached the office ahead of her.
A broad-shouldered man stood talking to Robert. Based on the look on Robert’s face, the call was anything but social. Robert’s typically laughing eyes were serious and intent, focused on the other man’s every word.
As she approached, Robert ran a hand over his closecropped blond hair and frowned. When he caught sight of Abby he nodded in her direction.
The visitor turned to face her and Abby blinked, stunned momentarily by the intensity of the man’s gaze. She’d never quite understood the term dark and smoldering until that moment. No matter, she wasn’t about to let the man intimidate her, and certainly not because of his looks.
“Abby—” Robert tipped his chin toward the visitor “—this is Jack Grant, a detective from Phoenix, Arizona.”
Detective?
She’d heard stories from other Web site owners
