Page 54 of Gather the Storm

“Are you sure?” Wolf asked.

“I’m positive,” she said.

“When did you last see it?” I asked. My mind was already looking for data to analyze because data never lied.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s definitely been a while. This console has been covered for ages.”

“Where is all the other stuff from the house?” I asked. “The books and vases and stuff?”

The house was loaded with furniture, but there weren’t any knickknacks or books and I assumed that was because they’d been stored somewhere.

“In storage,” Daisy said.

“Is it possible this was stolen out of storage?” Wolf asked.

She bit her lower lip. “It’s possible. But I feel like I remember this piece being here. The bigger stuff was covered, not stored.”

Wolf turned around and stalked back down the hall.

We followed him back into the kitchen where he looked inside the box and cursed.

“What?” Daisy asked.

Wolf looked at her. “Got any gloves?”

She opened the drawer where she’d found the scissors and removed a pair of leather gloves — the kind you used to do yard work, not the kind you used to commit a crime.

Wolf put them on and stuck his hand in the box, then removed a piece of paper. It took me a second to realize it wasn’t a piece of paper but a page torn out of a magazine — one of those home design magazines Daisy liked to read.

“What is that?” Daisy asked.

“Don’t touch it.” He set it down on the island and we all leaned in to read the three words scrawled across it in violet paint.

LEAVE IT ALONE.

Chapter 27

Jace

Fuck.

That was all I could think as I stared at the warning splashed in purple paint on the magazine page in my hand.

And it was afuckon a multitude of levels.

First of all, fuck that someone was threatening Daisy.

Fuck that someone had gotten close enough to the house to steal something from inside.

And fuck that whoever had done it had a reason to believe that Daisy was digging into Blake’s death.

Because that was the only thing the warning could be referring to: the package had been addressed to Daisy, not to one or all of us, and the vase was a personal touch that made it clear she was the target.

We were standing outside at the back of the house, the falls crashing over the cliff and into the river below, the perfect cover for a convo I didn’t want to be having.

“Maybe she’s telling the truth,” Otis said. “Maybe she has no idea what this psycho is talking about.”

When we’d confronted her about it, Daisy had denied inviting us to live here to dig into Blake’s murder, but I didn’t believe her for a fucking second. In fact, I was pissed at myself for not thinking of it from the beginning.

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