Dangerous Secrets. Lyn Cote

the last of the day’s wind continued to flog them. His nearness began to settle deep into her, soothing all of the ruffled edges that the last few days had caused.

      Finally his voice came soft and low. “Sylvie, there is a reason that all this happened. Something that Ginger said or did or saw made her a target. Someone knows that Tom and Shirley were her parents and that you were her cousin and close friend. So both your houses were places that she might have visited the night she came home.”

      “Or that she might have stayed last fall when she finished her summer here and left for Alaska again?” She looked up.

      “That’s right. These three places—her apartment, her parents’ home and your apartment—all were places she would have been last summer.” His voice gained momentum. “What happened to Ginger last summer that would have carried over until now?” He stepped away from her.

      She sensed him reestablishing his distance from her. Their moment of closeness was over. “But why would someone wait until now? Wouldn’t it have been easier to investigate, search these places, especially Ginger’s apartment, after she left for Alaska and before she came home?”

      “Good point. But it leads nowhere.” He dropped his hands from her.

      Bereft of his touch, she said, “I still think we need to find out what her surprise was. Maybe she told someone else around here. Maybe someone she knew met her when she came to town and told her something.”

      “A better point.” His businesslike manner had returned, searing their connection. “We’ve asked that anyone who has information about Ginger’s movements the night she came home to come forward. No one has but you.”

      “But if they have a guilty secret, they wouldn’t come forward,” she said, reestablishing her independence, too. She couldn’t let herself depend on Ridge. His stay here would be fleeting. “Because they would still be looking for whatever she had that they want…”

      “Yes, and we don’t know what that is. But can you think of anyplace in Winfield or nearby that she frequented last summer that might be a hiding place for something important?” He studied her as though he could summon the answer from her with a word.

      Blocking Ridge out so she could concentrate, Sylvie closed her eyes and tried to think. Ginger had worked the excursion boats that toured the Apostle Islands. That led nowhere. She shook her head.

      “Can you think of anywhere that she stopped before she came to you that first night?”

      Sylvie replayed in her mind the evening with Ginger and then the night she and her father had found Ben in Ginger’s attic. The peanut butter that Ben had eaten—yes. “Groceries. She had bought groceries.”

      “Groceries? You mean the ones in Ginger’s fridge?”

      “Yes.”

      “I thought one of the deputies, that young one, Josh, told me you’d put those groceries in the fridge.”