“Where’s the attic?”
She turned to leave the kitchen, only to roll her eyes as he darted in front of her, clearly still concerned that there might be some madman lurking in shadows.
“Through the living room and to the right,” she directed, following him into her grandparents’ bedroom.
It was a large room, with windows that overlooked the front yard. The wooden floors had been worn over the years, but the planks had been lovingly waxed and polished by her grandmother. The sturdy furniture had been carved by some distant ancestor, and probably weighed as much as a bulldozer. Which meant that it’d been hauled into the room a hundred years ago and never moved. There was a worn quilt spread across the mattress and homemade drapes that framed the windows.
A bitter sense of pain sliced through Carmen. Her grandparents had been all she had. Now they were gone. It didn’t seem fair.
Sensing Griff ’s steady gaze, she gave a faint shake of her head and crossed the floor toward the narrow door at the back of the room. Someday she was going to have to come to terms with her loss. Otherwise this place was going to end up another rotting farmhouse that would collapse into oblivion.
Grabbing the rusty doorknob, she tugged on it. Then tugged again, and again.
“Sorry,” she muttered, when the door abruptly flew open with a cloud of dust. She coughed, waving her hand in front of her face. “This hasn’t been opened in years. After I moved in my grandfather converted the loft of the barn into a storage area. That’s where they put most of the stuff from the attic.”
He moved next to her, peering at the steep flight of wooden steps.
“What stuff?”
“Christmas decorations. Old pots and pans,” she said. “And every work of art I ever brought home from school, including the turkey I made out of dry macaroni.”
His lips twitched. “You made a turkey out of macaroni?”
“Don’t scoff. I’m multitalented.”
“I believe you.” He paused before sending her a questioning glance. “Are you going up?”
Her brows lifted in surprise. “You’ll let me go first?”
He shrugged. “There might be bats.”
She rolled her eyes before heading up the stairs, which were too narrow for more than one person at a time. The man was willing to go into the house first when he thought there might be a killer waiting for them, but he was afraid of a bat?
She reached the planked floor of the attic, but before she could move into the thick darkness that shrouded the space, she felt Griff ’s arm wrap around her waist.
“Is there a light?” he demanded.
“There’s a bulb hanging from the rafters with a string attached to it,” she told him.
“Hold on,” he said. “I’ll find it.”
There was the squeak of old boards as Griff moved cautiously forward. Then Carmen heard a faint click before a small circle of light appeared in the center of the room.
She was on the point of moving to join Griff when he abruptly muttered a curse.
“What is it?” she demanded.
“Someone’s been in here,” he said, pointing toward the floor where there was a smudged outline of footsteps in the dust. “Look.”
“Crap.”
Without giving Griff time to protest, Carmen pushed past him to hurry toward the boxes that had been neatly stacked at the back of the attic. She was forced to hunch over as the slanted roof threatened to smack her on top of the head. By the time she reached the boxes she was bent almost double.
Dropping to her knees, she pressed her fingers to her lips. Each of them had been tugged open and the contents spilled across the wooden planks.
Clothes, shoes, a locked jewelry box, and a stack of letters that were tied together with a frayed ribbon.
With gentle care she folded her mother’s belongings and tucked them back into crates with hands that weren’t quite steady. Then, tugging off the ribbon, she opened one of the letters and angled it to catch the muted light.
Her heart clenched. The letter was addressed to her mother and the words were an outpouring of love and desire that brought a blush to Carmen’s cheeks. Quickly skimming to the bottom of the page, her heart gave another clench. The letter had been written by her father.
She trembled, carefully folding the fragile notepaper and tucking it back into the envelope.
What had happened?
How had her father gone from a man who blindly adored his young wife to someone who could end her life with a shotgun?
It didn’t make any sense.
Barely aware that a tear was trickling down her cheek, Carmen felt an arm wrap around her shoulders to tug her against the broad strength of Griff ’s chest.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured softly, brushing his lips over the top of her head.
Carmen sniffed, then blinked back her tears. Now wasn’t the time to try to deal with her father’s tangled motives for pulling the trigger. Or the pressures that might have led him to such a desperate act.
For now, she just wanted to get out of the dusty attic.
“I’m okay,” she assured him.
His lips touched her brow, then the tip of her nose before he was turning toward the boxes.
“Can you tell me if anything is missing?”
“The safe,” she said without hesitation. It’d been the first thing she’d noticed.
He muttered a curse before he was nodding toward the envelopes she clutched in her hands.
“What are those?”
“Love letters.” The words came out as a croak.
His arm tightened around her before he was pulling back and urging her away from the boxes.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said.
She allowed herself to be pulled across the floor and down the stairs. They moved in silence, both brooding on the fact that there had been unmistakable footsteps in the attic and now the safe was missing.
Someone had been at the farmhouse to steal her parents’ private papers.
She shook her head in bewilderment. It seemed that Griff had been right. This wasn’t about a copycat serial killer. It’d been nothing more than a disgusting trick by her family to ensure that they could protect the three million dollars they’d stolen from her.
Trying to come to terms with the knowledge that her wretched family were all a bunch of greedy psychopaths, she barely noticed when Griff strolled toward the window, his expression distracted.
Pacing from one end of the ugly carpet to the other, she finally came to an abrupt halt. Walking in circles wasn’t going to solve her troubles.
“What now?” she asked.
He slowly turned to face her. “If someone got their car stuck in the road, who would they call to get pulled out?”
“If they were local they would just ask a friend with a tractor to come and help.”
“And if they weren’t local?” he pressed.
She considered, then gave a shrug. “I suppose they would call the garage in town. I’m pretty sure they have a tow truck that they could send out.”
He pulled his phone from his pocket. “Do you have a number?”
She nodded toward the small desk in the corner of the room. Her grandfather had been an old-fashioned man who refused to be dragged into the current century. He’d never turned on a computer, preferring to write out checks for his bills at the end of each month. And he’d never had a cell phone, maintaining his landline until the day he died.
“I’m sure my grandfather has an old phone book that would have the number,” she said, her brows pulling together. “But it’s Christmas. There won’t be anyone there today.”
“Damn,” he breathed, shoving the phone back in his pocket. Once again he glanced out the window, this time angling his head to study the sky, which was painted with deepening shades of lavender and peach as the early dusk settled over the landscape. “How do you feel about spending the night here?”
Carmen paused. This was the only true home she’d ever had, and now it’d been violated by some unknown intruder. Had the sense of peace she felt when she came here been ruined forever?
After a pause, she released a small breath of relief.
She didn’t feel afraid. Or apprehensive. Not like she did when she’d entered her parents’ old home.