He was right and she knew it.
“Okay, we’ll go back to the B and B,” she said.
Suddenly Killer, who’d been at her feet, quiet and obedient, began to bark.
He stared at the trees, his body rigid and his posture fierce.
“Killer, hey!” Meg whispered.
She saw that Matt had already reached for his Glock. Startled, she did the same.
There was movement in the trees along the massive rock across from them. Meg thought she heard the sound of footsteps receding on the trail down.
Someone had been there, someone who was gone now.
The dog continued to growl.
“Stay as low as you can!” Matt ordered. He crouched down, level with the gravestones, then crept toward the trees. She followed, and they rose to a standing position when they reached the trees, walking furtively through the dark shadows. But they found no one.
“We are being followed,” Matt said slowly. He pointed to a broken branch. “Someone was watching us from these trees.”
“People are up here all day,” Meg said.
“This is a fresh break,” he told her. “See?” It appeared to be; Meg didn’t argue. She’d never considered herself much of a tracker. The situation hadn’t arisen for her before.
He set his hand on her back. “Let’s go to the hotel. I want to read what this note says.”
At his touch, she suddenly felt close to him; maybe it was natural. The two of them against the world as they stood high above the town, surrounded by graves.
“All right.” Killer stayed at her heels as they hurried down. At the top of the steps, Matt paused. He kept very still.
“Whoever it was is gone,” Matt said. He dropped down by the dog. “You know what, Killer? You weren’t such a bad idea, after all. Go figure.”
He started down the stone steps, Meg right behind him. Then they headed back up the hill to the General Fitzhugh Lee.
When they reached it, everything was quiet. Meg used her house key to let them in. Matt followed her to her room.
Killer hopped up on her bed and curled up to sleep. He seemed to believe that his work for the night was done.
Matt took the rolled note out of the evidence bag and set it on the television stand. “You have tweezers?” he asked her. “And a pen or something that’s not sharp?”
She found her tweezers and an eyeliner pencil with a soft end for smudging color.
Matt very cautiously began to use the tools to open the damp paper. Meg watched it unfold.
As she saw Lara’s writing emerge, her heart seemed to beat harder. Then she felt it sink to her stomach as she saw how much the ink had bled and run.
“We’re never going to be able to read it,” she murmured.
“You know her handwriting. See what you can figure out,” Matt said.
He was standing close to her again. They were nearly touching as they both scrutinized the paper. She felt an instinctive and almost overwhelming desire to turn to him, to gaze into his eyes and pretend this letter didn’t exist, that her friend wasn’t missing. She wanted him to hold her.
She gritted her teeth, appalled that she could suddenly want a man so much.
Especially this man.
Especially since she was now officially FBI. Officially Krewe...
She blinked and stared hard at the paper. She saw her name at the top.
“‘Meg,’” she read. “‘Silly, huh? You’ll probably never...’ Never what?”
“‘Find this.’ It says, ‘find this.’”
“Yes, yes, you’re right,” Meg said. “‘You’ll probably never find this, but...’”
Matt kept trying to read. “‘But if you do—if I haven’t retrieved it myself—then I’m in trouble. I’m doing this because I don’t know what’s really going on. I don’t want to falsely accuse, but this has something to do with...’”
He stopped reading. “To do with what?” he demanded.
Meg tried to study the paper again. “I can’t tell—I just can’t tell! The ink ran right there.”
Matt said softly, “I can make out the letters b-a-r-d. Does that mean anything to you?”
“The bard. Shakespeare.” Meg shrugged. “I don’t think she’d leave me a note about Shakespeare.”
“Seems unlikely,” he agreed. “Any ideas at all?”
She shook her head. “We used to leave notes when we were bothered by something. One semester she knew about cheating going on at college. She didn’t want to say anything. She felt it wasn’t her place. But it wasn’t right. She left me a note about it.”
“And what happened?” Matt asked.