The folder opened in my hands beneath the weak cemetery light, and the first thing I saw was my husband’s name.
RYAN CARTER.
Printed in block letters across the top of a document I couldn’t yet understand.
The headlights behind me went dark.
For one terrible second, the cemetery became completely still.
Then the voice on my phone said, “Emily, do not stand there reading it.
Walk toward the maintenance building.
Now.”
“Who are you?” I whispered.
“A friend of your father’s.
Move.”
A car door slammed somewhere behind me.
That was enough.
I shoved the folder under my coat and hurried between the headstones, trying not to run.
Damp grass soaked the edges of my shoes.
My father’s grave disappeared behind me.
The maintenance building stood near a line of trees at the far end of the cemetery.
As I approached it, a side door opened and a man in his early sixties stepped out.
I recognized him immediately.
“Mr.
Harris?”
Daniel Harris had been my father’s attorney for nearly twenty years.
I remembered him from childhood as the quiet man who occasionally sat at our kitchen table with Dad, drinking coffee over stacks of papers.
He pulled me inside and locked the door.
“Turn your phone off,” he said.
I stared at him.
“You sent the messages.”
“Yes.”
“From my father’s number?”
“Your father arranged it.”
The words hit me harder than I expected.
“What does that mean?”
Daniel looked toward the small window before answering.
“Three weeks before he died, Robert came to my office.
He was worried about Ryan.
Very worried.”
Outside, footsteps moved across the gravel.
I froze.
Daniel raised one finger to his lips.
The footsteps stopped.
A shadow crossed the window.
Then came a knock.
Three slow taps.
“Maintenance?” a man called.
My stomach turned.
Ryan.
I knew his voice instantly.
Daniel didn’t move.
Ryan tried the handle.
Locked.
“Hello?”
Another pause.
Then his footsteps retreated.
I waited until I heard an engine start before I spoke.
“He followed me.”
“Possibly,” Daniel said.
