Page 140 of Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds

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They weren’t number codes for the people she was blackmailing, I realized as I stared.

They were page numbers.

I flipped through the images that Brie sent me, and on those pages, a single word had been circled. I wrote them down in order.

score

child

rice

king

jewel

I had no idea why she circled these words, but I was sure I was on the right track. I read the paragraphs around these words, and they told a story specifically about the heroine’s search for the missing treasure. I wish I had the book so I knew where the treasure had actually been found in the story.

I hit myself and went to my e-reader app on my phone—something I rarely used—and bought a copy of the book. It took several minutes to download because the internet was slow, but when it finished, I immediately scrolled to the last two chapters and read as fast as I could.

The characters had found the treasure on a boat, locked in a box. The bad guys had killed Gabrielle’s mentor who’d found the treasure, but they couldn’t get it off the island, so hid it in a box on a public ferry.

There were several boxes on the St. Claire ferry, which would be safe, dry, and semiprivate to store documents that Diana planned to retrieve in a day or two. She easily could have hidden them the morning she left for St. John.

But it was night. It was raining. No way I could access the boxes now. It would have to wait until morning.

Brie waved at me, and I went to her. “I think I know where the documents are,” I said.

“Good. I have Amber’s room number.”

“Don’t tell her, because I want to find them first. I mean, if it’s something illegal, we need to turn it over to the authorities. But we can use it as leverage for information she has about Sherry.”

The lodge had four stories. We went up the stairs to the second floor. I glanced into the library and sighed.

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

Brie nodded. “It’s nice. But staff is sleeping in there tonight. We’ll check it out tomorrow.”

Amber was at the far end of the wide hall. I knocked on the door. I heard a loud curse behind the thick door, and then it flew open.

“Yeah? Oh. You.”

Amber didn’t look like her beautiful, put-together self. Her hair was dull, her eyes shadowed, and her face sallow.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Great!” she exclaimed sarcastically, throwing her hands in the air. She grabbed a wineglass and drained it, then poured another glass, but the wine bottle was nearly empty. She drank it anyway, then slammed it down on the table.

Brie and I glanced at each other, then stepped inside and closed the door.

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