When the police arrived at the Nelson farmhouse, they found five bodies. Brandon Jensen on the porch—dead. Kayla Olivera in an upstairs bedroom

—dead. Chelsea Cho in Shane’s bedroom—stabbed to death between the time I ran out of the room and the arrival of the police. Tim on the floor of the living room—bleeding and unconscious, but still alive. Shane on the floor of the living room—knocked out cold. Three dead, three survivors.

I was the one who told the police that Shane had tried to strangle me with my necklace. When Tim regained consciousness, he confirmed Shane had come at him with a knife and taken him down. But Tim forced himself to get off the floor and had hit Shane on the head with a baseball bat and knocked him out to keep him from following me out of the door—just before collapsing himself. Shane’s fingerprints were found all over the knife.

Shane was the only one who told a different story. He claimed that he never stabbed Tim—and it was his knife, so of course, his fingerprints were on it. He claimed Tim had knocked him out, and he couldn’t remember anything that happened afterward. He alleged that Tim must have stabbed himself to make it look like he was the innocent party. But of course, I was the tiebreaker who backed up Tim’s story. When I told the police about what Shane had done to me, he was the one arrested.

Even though I never saw his face through the whole thing.

And now Shane is spending his life in prison. Tim, on the other hand, is my boyfriend. Someone who I’m beginning to think I might have a future with, for the first time since I became a single mother at eighteen years old. He’s a great guy. The best, really.

Shane was the one who tried to strangle me that night. He had to have been.

Tonight, Tim and I are celebrating. I got the job at the primary care practice, and the salary and benefits are amazing, not to mention it’s much closer and much less scary than the prison. The interview went so well— they apologized for not responding to my first request for an interview when I was sending my resume all over town—apparently, some disgruntled patient had called and warned them about me. I felt terrible that a patient disliked me enough to do that, but I tried to put it out of my head. At least I have the job now.

So I handed in my notice at Raker Penitentiary, and even though Dorothy made a bit of a fuss about it, when I pointed out the fact that I hadn’t once met the physician supposed to be supervising me, she quickly changed her tune and wished me luck at my new position.

I won’t have to deal with Dorothy or Marcus Hunt ever again. I won’t have to see Shane ever again. Thank God.

Margie comes over to babysit for Josh so that Tim and I can have a night alone. Tim got it in his head that he wanted to cook dinner for me, so right now, I’m heading down the block to his house. I’d love to spend the night there, but it’s not fair to ask that of Margie, so the two of us will go back to my house at the end of the night.

As I press my finger against the doorbell, a random thought floats into my head: I wonder if Kelli Underwood ever came over here. I’m certain Tim told me the two of them had a couple of dates, so it’s not impossible he might have invited her over. She might have stood in this very spot, ringing the doorbell.

She’s still missing. It’s been a week now. I’ve been checking the news daily for updates, and the tone of the stories is sounding less and less optimistic. By now, if she were able to, she would have contacted somebody. The longer somebody is missing, the less chance there is of them turning up alive and well.

I tried to bring it up last night with Tim, and he changed the subject. I suppose I don’t blame him. He seems uncomfortable talking about his exes

—as do I.

Tim opens the door to the house, wearing a T-shirt and jeans. His whole face lights up when he sees me at the door, the way it always does. You would think now that we’ve been dating for over two months, he

wouldn’t always look so excited to see me. But he does. It feels like fate that we ended up together after all these years.

“Brooke!” he says. “Get in here… it’s cold!”

He’s right—the temperature has dropped in the last week, and my thin jacket doesn’t seem nearly warm enough. Raker gets a lot colder than Queens.

Once I’m inside the house, Tim helps me out of my coat and then wraps his arms around me to warm me up. I rest my head on his shoulder, feeling a rush of happiness. I never thought I’d have a relationship this good ever again. With every passing day, I’m more and more certain that Tim is The One. And he’s made it no secret that he feels the same way about me.

“Hey,” he says, “how did Josh’s math test go?”

Last night, Josh and Tim spent an hour studying the addition of fractions with different denominators for his test today. I had tried to explain it to Josh the week before, but somehow it didn’t get through. Luckily, Tim is a professional elementary school teacher who taught this very subject.

“He got a hundred,” I say.

“All right!” Tim does a fist pump. “That’s great.”

“I’m glad one of us is good at teaching math to ten-year-olds.” “Don’t feel bad. You’re cute, at least.”

I laugh and smack Tim in the shoulder. “You know what you’ve done, don’t you? You’re going to have to do this from now on every time Josh has an exam. You are now the designated teacher.”

He smiles at me. “I don’t mind that.”

As I head to the living room, I smell something tantalizing coming from the kitchen. It’s not as good as Margie’s kitchen aromas, but it smells pretty damn good. I inhale deeply as I settle down onto his sofa. “What are you cooking for me?”

Tim sits beside me on the sofa. “Guess.”

I take another sniff. “I smell tomato sauce.” “Ding ding ding.”

I remember the one other night I came over, Tim cooked spaghetti and meatballs. “Spaghetti and meatballs?”

He makes a face at me. “Should I be offended that the fact that you smell tomato sauce makes you assume I must have made spaghetti and

meatballs? I am capable of making other things, you know.” “Well, what is it then?”

“It’s spaghetti and meatballs,” he says, a touch defensively. “But it could’ve been something else. It could’ve been lasagna. Chicken parmigiana. Just saying…”

I lean in to kiss him. “I love spaghetti and meatballs.”

He kisses me back, pulling my body close to his. Is this the way he kissed Kelli Underwood? She certainly seemed to think he was a good kisser.

No, stop it. Why am I thinking about that? “I love you, Brooke,” he murmurs in my ear.

Since the first night he said it to me, we have opened up the floodgates. He loves telling me he loves me. And I can’t say I don’t love being loved. “I love you too.”

He pulls away and glances back at the kitchen. “Do you smell something burning?”

“No…”

He frowns. “I better go check on the food. I’ll be right back.”

As Tim dashes into the kitchen to tend to the spaghetti and meatballs, I lean back against the sofa cushion. I notice something bunched up against my thigh, causing an uncomfortable pressure, and I reach back to see what it is. Between the sofa cushions, my fingers locate a balled-up cloth.

I tug on the cloth until it comes free. That’s when I realize it wasn’t a cloth at all. It’s a green silk scarf, which had blended into the fabric of his green sofa.

Whose silk scarf is this? It sure as hell doesn’t belong to Tim. I bring the fabric close to my nose, inhaling the scent of a woman’s perfume. The smell is vaguely familiar.

“The sauce is fine,” Tim declares as he returns to the living room. “I’d say the food should be ready in about ten minutes. I hope you’re hungry, because I made way, way too much.”

I can’t even manage to force a smile. My fingers are wrapped around the silk scarf in my hand. “Tim, whose scarf is this?”

He barely glances at it. “I don’t know. Yours?” “It’s not mine.”

He looks more carefully at the green fabric in my hand, his eyes narrowing. “It doesn’t look familiar to me. Maybe it’s my mother’s?”

Of course, that makes sense. This is, after all, Tim’s parents’ house. It shouldn’t be suspicious to find a piece of women’s clothing stuck in the furniture. Maybe the perfume I was smelling seemed familiar because it was the same one that Mrs. Reese used to wear all those years ago.

Yes, that must be what it is. After all, it’s not like Tim is bringing other women here. He wouldn’t cheat on me.

Tim tugs the scarf out of my hand and tosses it onto the coffee table. Then he slides onto the couch next to me, so close that his thigh is pressed against mine. “Listen,” he says, “there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” He reaches out and squeezes my hand. “I just… I’m crazy about you, Brooke. I always have been. And I know we haven’t been together that long, but I hate being away from you for even one night. So I was thinking… maybe…”

Is he asking me if we should move in together? If that’s the question, I don’t know what to say. I’m crazy about him too. But I have Josh to think about. I can’t uproot his life by having another person move in with us, just to have it all fall apart. I can’t give my son a father and then take it away from him.

And there’s another reason why I’m not sure I’m ready to take things to the next level with Tim. I can’t shake the feeling that he’s hiding something from me. Why has he been so evasive every time I have tried to ask him about Kelli? He already told me he went out with her. Why won’t he admit it?

And who does this scarf really belong to?

Tim must notice the look on my face, because he releases my hand and backs away on the sofa. “You know what? Let’s talk about this later.”

My shoulders relax. “Good idea.”

“Hey.” He squeezes my knee. “Why don’t you grab a bottle from the wine cellar? I think we could use a drink.”

It’s sort of adorable that Tim calls their basement a wine cellar—but he’s already run off to the kitchen to take care of whatever is burning, so I don’t have a chance to tease him about it. It’s not a wine cellar—at all. It’s a

basement with like a dozen bottles of wine and a wood rack that his dad built. But I suppose if he wants to call it a wine cellar, I won’t begrudge him that.

While Tim is in the kitchen, I turn the knob to the basement door. Like my house, his house is old and the door sticks, so I have to wrench it open. And of course, the basement is pitch black. I feel around for the drawstring to turn on the light bulb. After grasping around blindly for about thirty seconds, my fingers make contact. A single bulb flickers on, dimly illuminating the basement.

The basement of Tim’s house feels colder than it is outside—almost frigid—and the air is slightly moist. As soon as I enter, I identify an unpleasant musty odor that wasn’t here the last time I retrieved a bottle of wine from the basement—he’s probably growing mold down here. I make my way down the lopsided wooden stairs, holding onto the icy metal banister so I don’t go flying. It’s dark enough down here that I am nervous about the placement of my feet on the ground.

When I get to the bottom, the wine rack is waiting for me. He seems to have added a few extra bottles since the last time I was down here. Not that Tim is any sort of wine connoisseur, but he just gets a kick out of having a wine cellar.

After pulling out a few bottles to check the labels, I select a bottle of Merlot. Does Merlot go well with spaghetti and meatballs? I have no idea. But it will taste good and give us both a nice little buzz.

Just as I’m about to go back upstairs, I notice a gray tarp rolled up on the floor of the basement, in the corner of the room. I hadn’t noticed that tarp the last time I was down here looking at the wine collection. What is Tim doing with a giant tarp?

I creep over to the rolled-up material—the strange smell is stronger over here. Even in the dim light of the basement, I can tell something is sticking out of the end. I bend down and realize what it is—it’s a shoe. No, not just a shoe, it’s a high-heeled red pump.

And it’s still on a woman’s foot.

I stare at the foot sticking out of the tarp, unable to comprehend what I’m seeing. I look closer and can make out another shoe peeking out of the tarp as well. Does Tim have a manikin wrapped in a tarp in his basement?

Don’t kid yourself, Brooke. You know exactly what you’re looking at.

Her scarf is lying on the coffee table upstairs.

I’ve got to get out of this basement.

I drop the Merlot on the ground, and the bottle shatters into dozens of pieces. I run for the stairway, taking the steps two at a time, not bothering to be careful this time. I place my hand on the knob and…

It doesn’t turn.

Oh God. It’s locked.