ahead to find out what time the library closed. From the tone of the woman on the phone, it had been a stupid question. No doubt the hours were common knowledge to the locals. The woman’s voice had seemed to convey the message that anyone who didn’t already know when the library was open wasn’t welcome to visit at any time.
After the last few weeks in Fremont, she was used to feeling unwelcome, Maggie thought. By now, the idea barely fazed her.
As she passed through the quiet streets, she took in her surroundings. Fremont wasn’t a very big town, and much of it was familiar to her. At the same time, it was odd how different the place seemed from what she remembered. She’d never felt unwelcome when she’d been here as a child. But then, she’d never really gone anywhere without one or both of her grandparents back then. Even though the townspeople may have disapproved of her grandfather’s stubborn insistence on keeping the house, he was still one of them. And as his granddaughter, she had been one of them, too.
And now she wasn’t.
It really was as simple as that. From the moment she’d made her intentions clear, people she remembered, people who clearly remembered her, had treated her far differently than they had before. Arms that had once been open were now folded shut. Backs were turned resolutely against her.
A hard lump formed in her throat. She did her best to swallow it. After everything that had happened in the past year, she’d hoped to retreat into the sheltering comfort of a place she remembered so fondly. But it appeared a person really couldn’t re-create the past.
The library was a squat one-story building toward the end of Main Street. Spotting it up ahead, Maggie pulled into a parking space in front and climbed out of her truck.
She was about to turn and head into the library when a sudden chill slid through her, raising the hair at the back of her neck. She hesitated, instantly recognizing the sensation.
She was being watched.
Without moving her head, she slowly scanned Fremont’s small downtown area. There was no one obviously in view. That just left all of the windows on the buildings lining the street. The late-afternoon sunlight shone down upon the glass, turning them into mirrors and making it impossible to see who was on the other side.
Any one of the windows could be hiding an unseen watcher.
Or all of them might be.
The sensation was so overwhelming that it was entirely too easy to believe. That every impenetrable window hid a watcher, like the entire town was staring at her, waiting for the slightest sign of weakness, wanting her to fail.
And they did. The eyes watching her weren’t just observing emotionlessly. They were angry. Hateful. She tried to convince herself she was imagining things, but couldn’t manage it. The feeling was too strong.
Pure malevolence.
Doing her best not to let her unease show, she raised her chin and squared her shoulders before slowly turning and entering the library.
Her tension didn’t ease once she was inside. A woman stood at a counter in front of the entrance. As soon as she looked up and caught sight of Maggie, her expression hardened, her frown tightening so firmly into place that it was almost impossible to believe her lips were capable of doing anything else.
It took Maggie a few seconds to recognize her. It wasn’t just the many years since Maggie had last seen her, though they were evident enough in every line and wrinkle on the woman’s face. No, it was her expression. Shelley Markham had been the librarian here when Maggie had been a child, and Maggie had never seen her look at her—or anyone else—with anything but a smile. Just another indication of Maggie’s changed status around here.
Maggie tried to force a smile of her own, something that proved a challenge to maintain the longer she met Shelley Markham’s unsmiling visage.
“Hi, Mrs. Markham. I don’t know if you remember me. I’m Maggie Harper. I used to come here—”
“I remember you,” the woman cut her off, her tone making it sound as if it wasn’t a good thing.
Maggie kept her smile as unmoving as Mrs. Markham’s heavy frown. “I’m sure you’ve heard I’m renovating my grandfather’s old house on Maple. I was hoping to look up some old newspaper articles about the Ross murders.” There was no point in trying to put it more delicately.
She never would have thought it possible, but the woman’s frown actually deepened. “Didn’t that man who works for you find what you were looking for?”
Confusion made Maggie lose her grip on her smile. “I’m sorry?”
“That man working for you. He was here a few hours ago looking up stories about the murders and printing them out.”
Maggie stared at the woman blankly. A few hours ago…This had to be where John had come during his lunch break. She hadn’t asked him to bring her anything, but she’d assumed he’d gone back to the diner, or maybe one of the fast-food places on the outskirts of town.
Instead he’d been here, looking up stories about the murders.
Why?
The woman’s eyes narrowed to slits. “You did know he was here, didn’t you?” Her tone seemed to indicate she suspected the answer was no, and added an unspoken “you idiot” to the question.
She didn’t have to say it. Maggie felt it as keenly as if she had. The information the woman provided had ensured that. She was the one who’d hired the man. She was the reason he was in town, and now he was running around doing things she knew nothing about, giving the impression they were under her orders, or at least with her knowledge.
And she had no idea what he was up to—or why.
Another man doing God knows what behind her back.
You idiot, she heard in her head, and it definitely wasn’t Shelley Markham’s voice doing the talking.
Anger surged from her gut, and every instinct screamed for her to race to her truck and storm back to the house to ask John what the hell he was doing.
Which was exactly what she couldn’t do, of course. She wouldn’t give Shelley Markham and all the people she’d be on the phone with the moment Maggie stepped out the door the satisfaction of knowing what a fool she was.
She had enough people who knew that. Once was enough for one lifetime.
She slowly drew in a deep, silent breath. With some effort, she regained her smile. “Of course I did. As a matter of fact, he didn’t find what I was looking for, so I came to search for myself.” She chuckled, the noise sounding forced to her ears. “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself, right?”
The woman simply pursed her mouth and turned away without a word, leaving Maggie to follow her to the files of microfilm and the viewing machine.
And for the next hour, Maggie forced herself to sit there under the force of Shelley Markham’s unrelenting stare, printing every single story on the murder that came up on the screen without really reading them.
When all she could think about was the man she’d invited into her life, and wonder what other secrets he was keeping
