Page 22 of The Familiar Stranger

“Well, that’s part two.Death is nigh.Is it her demise or someone else’s? Could be that something she was doing might harm someone else, and this was her warning to get a grip … or else.”

“I see what you mean. Moving on, we haveplease to avoid, which is weird phrasing. Could it suggest an accent of some sort?”

“That was my first thought,” I said.

“Could also be someone trying to get all poetic on us.”

“That too.”

I tapped a finger to my chin, then sipped on my beer, as Maggie guzzled hers.

I smirked and shook my head. “There are other possibilities for that part of the message. Maybe they meant to writeplease avoidand accidentally stuck in the ‘to.’ Or maybe they meant they’dbe pleased to avoidsomething. The comma at the end throws me a little bit. Maybe just a poetic punctuation. But it could be a sign-off of sorts. You know, ‘Signed, the friends of the PI.’”

Maddie smacked the table. “I like it. So that smudged thingie, the letter or whatever it is, at the bottom could mean something else. Maybe it’s not a signature at all.”

“Yeah.”

We stared at the note, going quiet. The waiter approached with our food, and Maddie swiped the note off the table.

Once the waiter left, I said, “I’ll say one more thing and then we can get down to enjoying the rest of the evening.”

“Sounds good. Where’s that brilliant mind of yours heading now?”

“In a nutshell, this all seems familiar, doesn’t it? I can’t place it just yet, but I will. And when I do, things won’t end well for our perfumed poet.”

CHAPTER17

After two rockstar bourbons post-dinner and a restful night of sleep, we agreed to extend our vacation one more day before going our separate ways—me to New Orleans and Maddie to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where she was scheduled to train a new staffer at the medical examiner’s office.

While Maddie was in the shower, I picked up the receiver on the hotel phone to punch up the front desk. Before I could, though, my cell rang with a call from Cade. Maddie was in the shower, so I knew I wouldn’t get any flak for taking the call. And besides, it felt like I hadn’t talked to him in ages. He knew nothing about what had been going on in North Carolina, and I decided I would share the highlights. Given Cade was a former chief of police in Wyoming, I was interested in his feedback on the note. I knew it would worry him, but there was no way to sugarcoat the threatening message.

“Catch any fish yet?” I asked.

“A bunch, and even though it’s been fun hanging out with the guys, I’ll be happy to get on home.”

“Mm, I’ll bet. There’s been a lot going on since we last?—”

“Sloane, you remember Andi Leland?”

I hadn’t expected her name to come up.

Andi Leland was a teenage girl who’d been kidnapped for human trafficking in Savannah, Georgia, over three years ago. My heart always jolted when I thought back to it. The details of the crimes were the stuff of nightmares. Maddie and I had been on vacation in the city while it was happening, so we did a little investigating on our own. And we solved it, stopping the killer right in his tracks. The killer mastermind, Hugh Barnes, was nothing short of psychotic. He ended up in prison where he belonged. He wasn’t there long before he was shanked, bleeding out on the floor of his cell, naked as the day he was born. He’d gotten what he deserved in the end, and I had to admit, I was elated when I heard about his demise.

“Sure, I remember Andi,” I said. “Such a brave young lady. Why are you asking about her?”

Cade’s long, heavy sigh indicated I wasn’t about to be given good news.

I braced myself, waited for him to continue.

“Andi called me?—”

“Why?”

“She was trying to get in touch with you but was dialing the wrong number. I told her you’d changed phone carriers back a year or so ago and your number too. Anyway, someone down there followed the breadcrumbs tomeand gave her my number.”

It was true. I had changed my number. I’d wanted to tidy up my contact list—and my availability to others from my past when I worked full time. It was an attempt to streamline my life, which never seemed to work. I’d shared my new number with just a few key people, but I’d updated my business information online. She could have found me if she’d looked.

Given Cade’s doleful tone, it was obvious something was wrong, and my stomach did a few flips.

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