answered her. After a long moment, she knocked again. “Elliot? It’s Megan. I’m here to clean your place.”
She still heard no response and stood there, torn by indecision for several moments. She wanted to trot down those porch stairs and head back to the main building, leaving him to deal with his own mess.
She couldn’t do that. Verla said he had been there a week without housekeeping services. That may be the way he preferred it, but she needed to hear it from him.
The inn had a reputation for immaculately cleaned rental properties, one she and Verla protected with vigor. She wasn’t about to let him give them a less-than-perfect review in that department.
She tried one more time then convinced herself that he must be taking a run or perhaps he had walked up to one of the restaurants in town for brunch with someone in his family. After knocking hard a third time with no answer, she finally used her passkey to open the door.
She hadn’t been in the cottage since Elliot took up his temporary residence a week earlier. It shouldn’t have surprised her how quickly he seemed to have made it his own. A jacket had been draped over the back of the sofa, a tin of cashews sat next to the sofa and a pair of binoculars rested on the window seat overlooking the lake. Maybe Elliot had more in common with the bird-watching schoolteachers than she might have guessed.
Beyond that, the entire surface of the kitchen table was covered in papers, along with a sleek dark gray laptop.
What fascinating case was he writing about this time? She had a wild temptation to leaf through the papers but quickly turned her attention to cleaning the place, not comfortable invading his space more than she already was.
The cottage really didn’t need much beyond what the housekeeping staff liked to call a spit and polish.
She quickly straightened up the bathroom, hung fresh towels, remade his bed and ran the vacuum around, muscles tensed as she waited for him to show up.
After she had wiped the last countertop and dumped the last wastebasket, she finally couldn’t help herself. She eased over to the table and glanced down at the manila folder on top of the stack of papers. Just a peek, she told herself. She was dying to know what his next book would be about so she could tell Verla.
With the sound of her heartbeat loud in her ears, she glanced toward the door one last time, then casually opened the folder halfway for a little peek. She caught the words Haven Point Police Department along the top and realized these were copies of an official police file.
Was he working on a local case? Her gaze sharpened and she opened the folder all the way. It only took an instant to pick up one clear name.
Elizabeth Sinclair Hamilton.
Her sister-in-law.
WHAT WAS HE doing with the case files for what was still an open investigation? She dropped the cleaning wipe on the table and leafed through the folders, growing more sick to her stomach with every passing second.
File after file, all marked with the same case number as the cover page. These were all part of the investigation into that terrible time that had changed everything for her family.
Her breathing came fast and hard, and she tasted bitter bile in her throat. The usually pleasing lemony scent of the cleaning supplies suddenly seemed to choke her.
Her instincts were to pick up everything, even his laptop, and throw it all into the lake.
The thought only had a few seconds to register when she suddenly heard the click of a key in the lock. Before she could make her frozen limbs cooperate to drop the files, the door swung open and Elliot stood in the doorway.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice as sharp as a new chain saw.
She had been working at the Inn on Haven Point for years, since her grandmother took her in after her mother died. She knew this was an egregious invasion of a guest’s privacy. If she had found one of her housekeeping staff snooping through a guest’s files, that person would have been fired on the spot.
She knew she was horribly in the wrong but she couldn’t focus on that right now. All she could think about was the scope of his betrayal.
Elliot stepped into the room. “Put that down. I had things in a particular order. I hope you haven’t rearranged anything.”
She stared at him. “Are you freaking kidding me?”
He didn’t look at her. “It might seem like a jumble of files to you, but I have a system.”
“You son of a bitch.”
It was the least offensive of the names she wanted to call him but everything else seemed to clog in her throat. She couldn’t seem to think straight, her thoughts a wild snarl of anger.
“I don’t believe my mother would appreciate you calling her names,” he said stiffly.
Now she wanted to throw him in the lake, along with all his files.
“How dare you?” Her hands were shaking and the sick feeling in her stomach seemed to be spreading through the rest of her.
He gave her a cool stare. “I’ll remind you that I’m not the one who broke into your place and started digging through your belongings.”
In another moment, smoke would be coming out of her ears, she was sure of it. “I was cleaning the cottage! Making your bed, changing your toilet paper, dumping your trash. Twice-weekly housekeeping service is provided to the cottages. It was listed in your rental agreement.”
“It’s not necessary. I don’t like my things bothered.”
“Again, are you freaking kidding me? This isn’t about me reordering a few pieces of paper. This is about you dragging my family through hell again! You’re writing a book about Elizabeth’s case, aren’t you?”
He met her gaze with an impassive look of his own. The man never gave anything away. Did they teach FBI agents how to go all stone-faced at Quantico? He must have aced that class, as he’d been practicing since elementary school.
“No,” he finally answered.
She narrowed her gaze. His hair was wet and it took her a moment to realize it was drenched with sweat. He had been running again. He wore long shorts and a Denver Rockies T-shirt that clung to the muscles of his chest. His right arm was still in a sling and she couldn’t imagine all that bouncing around could be particularly healing.
He had no right to look so good, damn him. Not when he was a sneaky, underhanded snake.
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not,” he answered firmly. “The book I’m writing concerns a serial killer in Montana who preyed on hitchhikers in the seventies and early eighties.”
She frowned. “Then why do you have all of Elizabeth’s files? What does a serial killer in Montana have to do with a missing mother in Idaho? Do you think they’re connected?”
