by Liliana Hart
It was her favorite room in the house, and that was saying something because she loved all of her house. She’d painstakingly redone every room exactly as she’d wanted it. But this was her room, and it was perfect—from the reading chaise she’d found at a flea market that sat beneath the beveled windows to the large walk-in closet that had originally been the nursery that attached to the master bedroom. Perfect.
Most people in the small town of Last Stop, Texas, considered her eccentric, and many of them had much more creative names for her. She hated to not live up to people’s expectations, so when the Gothic home on the corner of Elm Street and Devil’s Hill had gone on the market, she’d snapped it up in a heartbeat. And she’d gotten it for a steal too, because Realtors couldn’t even get clients to go inside of it.
It was the house that had scared the bejesus out of every kid in Last Stop for the last century. It was the house that sat dark and looming, so people made it a point to always walk on the other side of the street instead of passing directly in front of it. It was the house with the creaking gate and the overgrown rosebushes, and it looked spectacular at Halloween.
She never passed up the opportunity to help solidify her reputation by adding a little graveyard in front or sticking a voice box in the bushes that let out horrible moans. The house was rumored to be haunted by Captain Bartholomew T. Payne and his wife Annabelle, after old Bart had decided he’d rather see his wife dead than have her leave him for another man.
Miller had always been fascinated by the story, even though she’d yet to feel the presence of the original owners of the house. She rarely had visitors other than her friend Tess or her cleaning lady, so the outside was rather deceiving. Even with fresh paint and repairs done to the sagging porch and leaking roof, it still gave off a menacing presence. But like with all great things, it had a story, and she’d always been drawn to a good story.
She loved every square inch of it, and she would never move. The house fit her personality like a glove, and she cackled every time she peeked out her office window to see kids scurrying across the street and staring at the house in wide-eyed horror. It was the little things in life that brought joy.
She sighed as she passed the bed. The soft sheets were looking a little too enticing. She couldn’t afford a comfortable sleep. Not until the book was done. If she got in that bed it might be a week before she woke up. It was important she keep her energy high, so she’d shower and dress, and then she’d get out and talk to actual people instead of the ones in her head before sitting back down at her desk and getting back to work.
She stripped out of her clothes and considered throwing them in the trash instead of subjecting Julia to laundering them. Julia was a single mom to five boys. She not only cleaned Miller’s house, but did a few other houses as well. Then she cleaned the schools on Saturday, and the church on Sunday evening. Miller could only hope that the laundry of five boys was worse than that of a writer, though she wouldn’t have bet money on it.
The pipes creaked as she turned on the water in the claw-foot tub, and while she waited for it to heat up she found an extra box of black hair color under the sink so she could tackle her roots. By the time she’d gotten the color on and her head wrapped in plastic, the water was hot. She lit the candles on the window sill and dimmed the lights, and then she tossed a bath bomb in the water and hoped the smell of roses was strong enough to overpower the smell of deadline.
An hour later, her skin was pruny, her roots were dyed, and she smelled a whole lot better. She blow-dried her hair, moisturized her face, and put on double the concealer she normally would because she could’ve slept in the bags under her eyes.
By the time she was done, she was exhausted. And talking to real people didn’t sound as exciting as it had before. Where was she going to go? Happy hour? By herself? Maybe Tess would come with her. But she was married now, and there were rules about things like that. She’d somehow talked herself out of a big night out, and she found it wasn’t as appealing as she’d first thought. Mainly because her mind was still stuck on Elias Cole.
“Ridiculous man,” she muttered.
What she needed was to clear her mind with a good friend and conversation, and Tess was three blocks away with a fully stocked wine fridge. Maybe they could have a girls’ night in like they used to, but there were those marriage rules that had to be observed. Since Tess’s marriage to Deacon Tucker, Miller had learned dropping in unannounced was never a good idea. They were still in that honeymoon phase of their marriage where they were almost always naked. It made the funeral home a really interesting place to visit after office hours. And sometimes during office hours.
She put on black leggings, a sports bra, and an oversized gray shirt that warned people if they annoyed her they might end up in one of her novels. People always laughed, but she’d been known to kill off the occasional annoyance in one of her books. Comfort was the name of the game for the evening’s activities. She’d give her brain a quick break, and then get back to business.
Miller hopped on the bed and struck a quick pose propped against a mound of pillows, and then she held up the latest release of one of her good friends. She took a selfie with the book and then uploaded it to Facebook, pimping her friend. The great thing about social media was no one would know she’d worked ninety-plus hours in the last few days, eaten nothing but carbs and chocolate, and drunk an unhealthy amount of coffee. She wouldn’t change things for the world, though she needed to hit the gym very soon so her behind wasn’t as wide as her chair. When it came to her readers, she’d continue to put on double layers of concealer so they’d see the fun and glamourous life they thought a bestselling author should live.
She stuck her head into the massive master closet and dug out a pair of neon-fuchsia running shoes with lime-green laces. Tess told her they made her eyes hurt, but Tess hated everything to do with running, so her opinion hadn’t influenced Miller’s decision to buy them. She grabbed up her dirty clothes and robe, embarrassed to leave them for Julia to find.
Her stomach rumbled again and she bounded down the stairs, making a stop at the laundry room and dumping the clothes in the washer. She hummed as she measured the soap and turned on the hot water, and then she added a little extra soap just to be safe.
The pile of mail on the entry table caught her attention and she again scooped it up, taking it with her to the kitchen. Everything about the kitchen was functional, from the hidden cabinets where she kept her small appliances, to the wine refrigerator in the big butcher-block island, to the pot filler over the stove. Unfortunately, she didn’t get to actually cook in the kitchen very often, mostly due to the fact that when she was working, she frequently forgot to eat. Besides, what fun was cooking for one? When she did cook, it was to make emergency brownies or comfort mac ’n’ cheese. She figured if she was going to torture herself by working out, she might as well have a good reason.
She dumped the mail on the island, then opened the refrigerator. A bottle of ketchup and a cold pack she sometimes used on her eyes were the only things on the shelves. It’d been a while since she’d had a real meal, and even longer since she’d been to the grocery store.
She closed the refrigerator door and saw the note beneath the magnet in Julia’s handwriting.
You need everything. This is no way for a grown woman to live. You’ll get scurvy. Make me a list and I’ll get what you need when I come on Tuesday.
“It’s Friday,” she said, and then thought about it a second. “I think,” she corrected. “I could be dead of starvation by Tuesday,” she said.
She’d just have to wing it. She wasn’t opposed to eating fast food until the fridge was stocked. The only things worse than going to the grocery store were visiting the gynecologist or getting bad book reviews.
She went through the mail quickly, discarding most of it as junk, but the last envelope had her brother’s familiar block handwriting on it, so she put it aside and then turned to the package. It was a plain brown
box, no bigger than the length of her hand, and just as wide. There were several layers of brown tape, so she grabbed a knife from the block on the counter.
Justin had taken up the habit of sending her trinkets that had supposedly belonged to Solomon after he’d joined the military, but they hadn’t come in a while. She slid the knife under the layers of tape and lifted the flaps. The box was crammed with newspaper, and she noticed the headlines were written in Spanish. That was certainly odd. She pulled it out and then tilted the box over. Something weighty and wrapped in more newspaper fell into her hand, but it was the clank of metal hitting the counter that grabbed her attention.
She picked up the heavy ring with the large purple stone. Within the stone was the carved insignia of the king she’d been told stories about her whole life. And despite her resentment of the tales and adventures that had broken her small family, the obsession had become hers. Because now she was writing the story of the great and troubled king and the woman he’d loved more than any treasure, hoping that putting it on the page once and for all would finally give her freedom.
It was her brother’s ring, given to him by her father, as it had been given to him by his father, passed down from generation to generation. A ring made in the image of the one Solomon had worn during his reign. A ring that had been one of twelve that Solomon had given to each of the prophets of the twelve tribes of Israel.
If her information was correct, and she had no reason to believe it wasn’t. In the chest with the trinkets and letters was a small book with her family history written on the pages, and tucked inside it were papers and letters, many of them museum quality that she needed to have protected between glass. It was on her ever-growing to-do list. But her history was there, dating back to the prophet that Solomon gave one of the rings to.
What wasn’t written between the pages of her ancestry was the reason why her parents had been the way they’d been. There was no explanation for their obsession, other than pure academic fascination of a legend. Her father had been in the military before getting his degrees in ancient civilization. He wrote papers and taught graduate-level classes at the university so they could pay their bills, never really had to be in class much since most of the graduate-level study was research and writing papers. And her mother had spent most of her days planning the next trip, scattering maps across the dining room table and following leads.
Before her parents had left on their last adventure, her father had taken Justin into his study and talked to him for a good while. She remembered how jealous she’d been of that time they’d spent together, of the attention she craved but never received. She’d been in bed when they’d finally finished their time together, but she’d been awake, listening for Justin’s bedroom door to close. When she’d gotten up for school the next morning, her parents were gone and Justin was wearing her father’s ring. The ring she was now in possession of.
There was nothing in this world that would’ve made Justin send her his ring. It had been passed down from father to son for more generations than she could count. And if Justin never had a son, it would go to her son if she ever had one. The ring was priceless. And it was always to be worn by the living male heir. Which meant for Justin to not be wearing it was more awful than she could imagine.
Cold fear clutched at her belly and her hands shook as she took the tissue paper in her hand and slowly unwrapped it. When she got to the contents inside, her mind couldn’t process what she was looking at.
She dropped the package and took a step back, her hands clammy and bile rising in the back of her throat. In the middle of the tissue paper was a human finger. She had a sinking feeling she knew why her brother no longer wore his ring.
CHAPTER TWO
Miller wasn’t someone who panicked in a crisis. But there were always exceptions.
“Not a panicker,” she managed to croak, just to reinforce the sentiment. “I’m sure there’s an explanation. I have no idea what it could be, but I’m sure there is one.”
It wasn’t unheard-of for her to get unusual packages or gifts. She’d even dealt with a stalker early on in her career. Maybe this was someone playing a sick prank, and the finger wasn’t even real. That didn’t explain the ring though, but it was at least a workable theory.
There was only one way to find out if it was, in fact, a real finger, and it didn’t involve her getting a closer look at it. Spots danced in front of her eyes as she hurriedly rewrapped the finger and tossed it back in the box. Then she shoved the newspaper back inside and closed the lid. She put the ring on her thumb, grabbed her purse and keys, and then headed to the carport at the back of the house where she kept her bright red Range Rover.
The wind cut like a knife, and she sucked in a breath of surprise at how much the temperature had dropped since the last time she’d been outside, not counting her encounter with the UPS man earlier that morning. Her anger had kept her plenty warm during that exchange.
Texas falls and winters were always unpredictable, so it was best to just be prepared for anything from an ice storm to temperatures in the nineties within a twenty-four-hour period. It made dressing every morning interesting. Which was just another reason she was grateful she didn’t have to put on real clothes and go to an office job every day.
She didn’t want to waste time going back inside to grab a jacket, so she forged ahead. Her teeth chattered, but she wasn’t sure if it was because of the weather or the contents in her hand.
She put the box in the passenger seat, determined not to think about what was inside. The clock on the dashboard said it was just after five in the afternoon, and in another half hour it would be completely dark. Hopefully, Tess would be done with work for the day. And if she wasn’t, she was about to get one a hell of an interruption.
Tess Sherman was the director of the Last Stop Funeral Home—an unfortunate name in Miller’s opinion—and her best friend. In a town of only a couple thousand people, the funeral home didn’t get a whole lot of business. Which was great for the town, but not so great when you were trying to keep a business afloat. And certainly not reason enough to have five incredibly attractive employees who were driving the women of Last Stop crazy with lust.
The new owner of the funeral home had been sending hot men to Tess at pretty regular intervals the last couple of years. Miller had never understood how a small funeral home could afford to hire that many full-time employees, and she couldn’t imagine how bored they must be. Tess had never understood it either, but since she wasn’t the boss there was nothing she could do but take them in like they were contestants on The Bachelorette.
The men stood out like sore thumbs in a small town like Last Stop. Miller’s imagination had run wild at the thought of all that testosterone occupying the same space, and she’d come up with several new book ideas. And so what if her last two heroes had looked and acted an awful lot like Elias Cole? He was most definitely romance novel material. Except for the fact that he’d left her hot and bothered, with her shirt flung over the porch railing and her jeans halfway to her knees before he’d run off like his pants had been on fire.
The funeral home was only three blocks from her house, and she made it there in record time, running two stop signs and squealing into the driveway on two tires. She was relieved to see there weren’t any cars parked in the side lot and the Suburban that hauled the bodies was housed in the multicar garage.
She parked behind a black Hummer that belonged to one of Tess’s many ridiculously hot employees, and a motorcycle that belonged to Tess’s husband. Miller wasn’t sure what kind of lottery Tess had won to end up with a group of testosterone-driven alphas all under the same roof, but she wouldn’t mind buying a ticket for herself.
Miller looked at herself in the rearview mirror and noted the lack of color in her face, and that her eyes were wide with shock. Her teeth had stopped chattering, but her hands shook as she grabbed her bag and the package and pushed the car door open, getting out and then bumping it closed again with
her hip. She didn’t bother to lock it. Getting to Tess was a priority. She needed her friend.
ELIAS COLE TOOK a long swig of beer, and then held the cold bottle against the bruise forming on his cheek. It throbbed like a bitch.
It had been one hell of a long day. It had started before sunup, when he’d done a ten-mile run, and then he’d gotten to the funeral home in time to change into old work clothes so he and Deacon could dig a grave for the guest who would soon be occupying a plot at the cemetery. Despite the cool temperatures, it was hard, sweaty work, and he’d been ready and grateful for a shower by the time they’d gotten back.
Once the funeral home business was finished for the day, there’d been training to take care of. Daily training was essential in their line of work. They had to stay sharp, and they were constantly running different scenarios.
They all came from different backgrounds and had different training and different specialties. It was what made them unique and what made them a force to be reckoned with. He was a SEAL sniper, and he kept his skills honed. Levi was Mossad, and Dante had been with MI-6. Deacon had been CIA, and Axel had been his Australian counterpart in ASIS.
The technology the Gravediggers were provided was unparalleled, and that included their training. Virtual reality and holograms put them through real-time simulations, and there were never two the same. Some of the sims needed military skill. Others needed stealth and subterfuge. Some even called for explosives. Which was why he was nursing a bruised cheek with a cold beer bottle. Aches and pains were all part of the training process.
“Cheer up, mate,” Axel said, setting bowls of pretzels and chips on the table. “It could’ve happened to any one of us.” He took a drink from his own beer and sat on the opposite side of the table.
It was Friday night. The work and training were over, and it was time to let off a little steam with beer, poker, and bullshit. They were all gathered, minus Deacon, at the glass-top kitchen table in the carriage house behind the old Queen Anne funeral home. A replica of an English rose garden sat between the two structures, and there were benches and a fountain so mourners could escape viewings when the funeral home got too crowded. When there weren’t mourners invading their space, it was a nice area to look at or spend time in. Axel could usually be found at sunset most evenings on one of the private corner benches.
