Inside, she slammed the dead bolt into place, unsnapped the leash, grabbed a towel she kept in the front closet, and tried to towel Ringo off, but he shot to the nearest window, rising on his back legs, nose pressed to the glass, lips pulled back in a silent snarl.

“Stop that,” she ordered as she headed to the kitchen and filled a teakettle with water. It’s probably just a squirrel. Or the fat yellow tabby cat who’s usually perched on the upper unit’s deck. Nothing more sinister. Get over yourself!

She shook a shiver away, then rummaged around in the cupboard. No champagne this Valentine’s Day. Tea would be just fine.

When she returned to the living room Ringo was sitting on his haunches, but his eyes were still fixed on something outside the window.

Becca tried to woo him to sit on the couch beside her, but when she went to pick him up, he sidled away and paced in front of the glass. Unnerved by his behavior, she picked up the paper and slid it from its plastic sleeve. Her eye fell on a picture of statue. The Madonna inside the maze at St. Elizabeth’s. The bold headline read: BOYS DISCOVER HUMAN SKELETON INSIDE MAZE.

Her lips parted in shock.

The teakettle shrieked and Becca gave an aborted scream. Ringo flew into frenzied barking. It took long moments before she could calm the dog and her own rocketing pulse enough to actually read the article about the body found on the grounds of the private high school she’d attended, a school now being razed.

When she was finished, she counted her still-accelerated heartbeats and stared at the rivulets of rain running down her window, her thoughts far from this miserable Valentine’s Day, her deceased husband, and whatever had spooked Ringo.

Her mind slid easily into the past and those days of high school. She knew the skeletal remains belonged to Jessie Brentwood, the girl from her vision, the friend from high school who’d disappeared without a trace, the girlfriend of Hudson Walker, Becca’s own secret crush and the father of Becca’s unborn child, had he but known it.



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