Perilous Homecoming. Sarah Varland

a common gambit for upscale thieves, allowing them to snatch something that had, only moments before, been in plain sight. Perhaps the curator had caught a thief in the act of tampering with the wiring prior to the blackout. Was that why he had died?

      She reminded herself not to jump to conclusions. She’d barely met the curator and had been away from town too long to know the current gossip. There could be a dozen reasons someone might have wanted the man dead.

      Before she could apologize, before Clay could reply, another man walked their direction, tall and a little intimidating. Lieutenant Davies.

      “He read you your rights yet?”

      Kelsey couldn’t stifle her laugh. “Rights? Davies, I used to work with y’all. I know my rights and if you have a brain in your head, you’ll realize I’m innocent.”

      “Are you verbally assaulting an officer?” His serious face didn’t change. He’d always been a man who’d done his job well, but personally he and Kelsey had never gotten along.

      She shook her head. “You know I’m not. But you also know I’m not a killer.”

      “I guess we’ll see. I’ll spare you the cuffs, anyway, as long as you move slow. Let’s go get in the car.”

      Kelsey followed him without another word. She climbed into the back of the police car—definitely a first for her—and looked out the window, at the museum, for as long as she could before they drove out of view.

      Straight to the place where she’d first started to realize she might not be good at everything she put her hand to. She’d already faced disgrace at the Treasure Point police station. Was she about to face murder charges there, too?

TWO

      Sawyer had gone back inside after watching Kelsey exit. But though the lights had come back on in short order, the party atmosphere had already vanished. All the guests had been herded into the main gallery, where the police had announced that no one would be allowed to leave until everyone had given a statement.

      That had been over an hour ago. A young police officer Sawyer didn’t recognize had taken down his contact information and asked him some questions about the party—what his connection was to the museum, what he had seen and heard, who he had talked to. The kid had been annoyingly vague when Sawyer had tried to ask some questions of his own—namely, asking what on earth was going on. Clearly something wasn’t right here. But none of the guests he’d spoken to in the past hour had the slightest idea what the problem was, and the police were being very closed-mouthed.

      He wanted answers, and while he seldom used his family name to his advantage, he started looking around for a Treasure Point police officer who might give him some information.

      There. Clay Hitchcock. No use of his family name would be necessary, since the two of them had been friends, had played football together back in high school—Sawyer was the quarterback to Clay’s receiver.

      “Clay!” Sawyer jogged in his direction. “I need to talk to you.”

      “Is it about all this?” He gestured around him. “Because otherwise it needs to wait.”

      “I’m not sure. Kelsey...”

      “What about her? Did she tell you something?”

      “No, she didn’t. I just... She seemed really shaken up when the lights went off. She went from acting like she hated me to asking for my help and I don’t understand what happened or where she went. I haven’t seen her since then, which is weird, since I know y’all aren’t allowing anyone to leave.”

      “You spoke to her after the lights went out? What did she want?”

      “Just for me to use my flashlight to help her find her way to the door.”

      “So you helped her and then?”

      “She ran.”

      Clay nodded. “I saw her after that. She’s at the station now.”

      “The police station?” Sawyer frowned. “Is she okay?” Nothing about this was making sense to him.

      “She is for now. Or she will be soon. But at the moment, she’s answering some questions for us.”

      “I don’t understand.”

      Clay shook his head. “I’m sorry, man. It’s all I can say for now.” He started to walk away, then glanced back at Sawyer. “You and Kelsey were talking? I didn’t realize you were friends.”

      They weren’t, apparently, judging by her attitude toward him. Though he supposed he hadn’t helped matters by failing to recognize her before she gave her name. Sawyer shook his head, being honest with both himself and Clay. “We’re not, really.”

      “But you didn’t mind helping her?”

      “Right.”

      Clay ran a hand through his hair, looked around. “Listen, I know this doesn’t make a lot of sense, but something about this doesn’t feel right to me. I think they’ll let Kelsey go soon and I can’t help her because I’m needed here. We’ve taken everyone’s statements and I was just about to announce that everyone’s free to go. Do you think you could go to the station and offer to give her a ride, make sure she’s okay?”

      “Yeah, I can do that.” It beat wandering around here in a suit, trying to stay calm, like one of the band members on the Titanic while it went down. “Are you two dating?”

      Clay laughed. “Her mom and my mom are sisters. I’d say that’s a no.”

      Cousins. How had he missed that in high school? That shouldn’t have made Sawyer as relieved as it did. He didn’t remember ever being attracted to Kelsey in high school, though he’d admired her intellect and competitive spirit. Was he that shallow that the fact that she’d grown up gorgeous had made her catch his attention? Or had he just changed enough to recognize that Kelsey Jackson might be a special kind of woman?

      “I’ll go see what I can do,” Sawyer said, and Clay nodded.

      “Thanks, man.”

      Then the other man was gone, leaving Sawyer to jog toward his truck and wonder how this night that had started out as an obligation—a somewhat boring one, at that—had turned into some kind of secret mission to make sure a woman who couldn’t stand him was all right, safe from a threat Sawyer didn’t yet understand.

      * * *

      Kelsey sat in the small room that passed for an interrogation room in Treasure Point. Really, it was an old office that the officers usually used as a sort of lounge. It was where the coffeepot was, and the smell of burnt coffee filled her nose and made her ready to confess anything just so she could get out of this room, out of this town and back to her life in Savannah.

      Except sheer stubbornness meant that she wasn’t about to confess when she wasn’t guilty of anything. Quite the opposite, she was one of the most promising witnesses they had. So why this treatment? They’d kept her waiting in here for nearly an hour.

      The door squeaked as it began to open. Kelsey braced herself. As boring as it had been to sit here, and as eager as she was to get this over with so she could leave, she was not looking forward to any line of questioning that pointed to her as a murderer, a concept so atrocious to her she couldn’t let her mind dwell on it.

      But instead of Davies’s smirk, ready for an interrogation, it was the chief’s weathered, familiar face.

      “Sir! What are you doing here?”

      He cracked the smallest of smiles behind his facial hair. “I work here. Although I could ask the same of you.”

      Kelsey looked down.

      “Listen, I talked to the lieutenant. And I’ve been over to the museum to see where all of this happened, and