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My gaze dropped, and my stomach turned. Across his chest, smeared in dark, drying strokes was…I’M SORRY. The letters were uneven and thick and clearly written in blood.

I shivered and flipped the photo over and found the report clipped behind it, scanning the lines.

Male. Mid-thirties. No immediate signs of struggle. Cause of death undetermined at scene.

Another line had been underlined twice, the ink pressed hard enough to nearly tear the paper.

Possible connection to prior unsolved cases. Pattern suggests emerging serial offender.

My fingers lingered on the edge of the page for a second before I forced them to move, sliding the report aside and going to the next sheet in the file…an obituary from a few days after the date of the report.

I almost skipped past it—it was just another name in a stack full of them—until the person’s name snagged my attention.

Hayes.

I hurriedly read through the obituary. There was her name, her age, and a short paragraph about the life she’d lived in Blackwood. Sterling’s name sat in the next section about the people she’d left behind, and my stomach tightened as I shifted the paper, catching the edge of the newspaper clipping tucked behind it. The headline peeked through first.

Local Woman Found Dead

My pulse kicked as I pulled the clipping free and more of the headline came into view.

…Suspected Suicide

Sterling’s voice from the night before, quiet and almost absent.

My mom died when I was a kid.

I stared at the page, a million thoughts coursing through my head…all of them involving Sterling. Finally, I slid both pieces of the paper back into place and dragged my attention back to the task in front of me.

Dates. Months. Order. Something I could control. I kept sorting, stacking pages into neat piles, but the file didn’t feel the same anymore.

A body left in the woods with an apology written in blood.

A woman who had taken her own life.

Almost every page had something.

One thing was for sure…this town held a lot of sorrow. It sat in the walls, in the paper, in the way things weren’t thrown away but tucked into folders and labeled and kept. I lined up another stack, my fingers slower now.

I wondered how a place like this held all of that without breaking.

And then, before I could stop it⁠—

How Blackwood would handle mine.

CHAPTER 20

SIENNA

I’d wanted a leisurely Saturday after my first week of work, but the universe had decided against that for me, judging by the knock on my door at eight a.m.

Hattie didn’t knock like a normal person. She pelted the door as if she were trying to send it into another dimension. “Rise and shine, city girl!” she called. “It’s mental health o’clock!”

I swung my legs over the side of the bed and shuffled to the door, opening it with a caution usually reserved for horror movies. “If this involves another rodeo, I’m calling a lawyer—any lawyer—because I refuse to participate.”

She stood there in a “YEE THE HAW” T-shirt, leggings, and hiking boots that didn’t look like they’d seen many trails. A messy braid hung over one shoulder.

“Good morning,” she sang, breezing past me into the room like she’d never heard of privacy.