“Come inside. I called Jack.”
“Now you call the Army Ranger?”
“Now they’re not just breaking into your grandmother’s house.”
I gripped my purse to my chest. “Shouldn’t we call the police?”
“I don’t think they’d be convinced there was a break-in.”
I followed him inside. “But you are?” When he gazed back at me, I held up a hand. “Never mind. Of course you can tell.”
“It was a methodical search, and they were smart enough to get past my security. They also seemed to know where my cameras were.” He brought in his laptop and set it on the kitchen island. He tapped a few keys and the video feeds came up.
I wasn’t sure I even knew how many cameras were in the house.
We’d had sex all over the damn place.
“Do you keep a running tape at all times?”
He nodded. “I usually review it weekly and dump it.”
“Usually?”
“We’ve been a little busy.”
I popped each of my knuckles with my thumb. “Are we…um. Hmm.”
Blake raised an eyebrow. “We’ll revisit that conversation, all right?”
“You’re damn right we will.”
An insistent banging on the front door halted our conversation. Blake went to answer it, checking the peephole before he swung open the door.
“What the f*ck
, son?”
Blake’s face was murderous. He paced the length of the kitchen, then back again.
I put my hands on my hips. “For God’s sake, just tell him.”
When he gave me a mutinous look, I went over to Jack and hugged him. “I’m sorry. He’s being an ass*ole
.”
“Great,” Blake muttered.
“Well, you are. He’s your best friend, Blake.”
Jack dumped a case onto the table. “I brought my equipment. Now are you going to bring me in on this little secret society crap you two have got going?”
I opened the rice container and fished out the memory stick.
Blake snatched it out of my hand. “Remember the night someone broke into the old Stuart place?”
Jack nodded. “Sure, the beach house. I thought it was kids.”
“No. Someone’s been looking through the house for this. Or so we think anyway.” He dropped the diary onto the kitchen island.
Jack picked it up. “Gracie dropped this last week. On the steps.”
Blake nodded, then took it back from Jack. “It was a diary from her grandmother.”
Jack crossed his arms. “Something juicy in there, I take it?”
“It’s in some sort of code.”
“Like I need a decoder ring deal type of code?”
I stepped forward. “More like codenames for people. I’ve figured out a few, but for the most part it seems to be some sort of shorthand to protect the not-so-innocent.”
Jack leaned his hip against the counter. “Are we in an episode of Revenge?”
I laughed. “Good analogy. I don’t think there’s that much murder involved, but we’re starting to wonder.”
Blake covered the diary with his palm. “It seems that people really want this diary.”
Unless there was something else even worse hidden in the house. But I didn’t want to think about that possibility. Imagining these men—or women or whoever the hell they were—digging around for my grandmother’s old secrets was awful enough.
The word why had become a continuous chant in my head.
Jack glanced down at me. “Where’d you find it, Nancy Drew?”
“I designed the stained glass over the back door. Sometime in the last five years, my grandmother replaced one of the panes with two pieces of Blake’s glass. She hid the diary in between the two panes.”
“Wow. Really?” Jack picked up the diary. “I guess it’s small enough.”
“They’ve been breaking into the beach house and systematically breaking all the decorative glass, so I went through the house for the last few weeks, double-checking every single corner.” I shrugged. “I found a book-sized pane that slid up. She must have been using it for years.”
“Well, damn. What’d the old biddy have on people? Blackmail? Sex, drugs, and rock and roll?”
“Be serious for half a second in your life, would you?”
Jack’s face sobered. “Look, son. I may make jokes, but I’m f*ck
ing serious about my friends. I’m just trying for a little levity in this crazy-ass story.” He shook his head. “You should have come to me weeks ago about this.”
Blake blew out a breath. “I thought you might be involved.”
Jack’s brows snapped down. “What? How could you—”
I stepped between them. “Look, Jack. You didn’t tell him you were watching me, for one thing.” I smacked his arm. “Eww, by the way.”
Jack bunched up his shoulders. “I wasn’t spying on you in your underwear, Gracie. Just making sure all you were doing was using the house as a studio.”
“Yeah, well, both of you were keeping secrets.” I waved a hand in the direction of my lover. “When he found one of your cufflinks at the house after the break-in, he went all Blake.”