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called Annie’s Kitchen. With her love of cooking and all things homey, it seemed the perfect choice. Maybe the crazy thoughts would disappear. Lord knows she needed to get on the path of rational thinking.
    After she ordered her food, she took her journal out of her purse. Like her sisters, she’d read it from front to back a dozen times already, and the more she read, the more memories she resurrected. She flipped past the journal entries regarding her first years with Andrew to an entry regarding her first date.
    The day you came in and told me Joe Don Rooney had asked you out was a real shock for me. I’d always thought of the three of you as my little girls. That really made me adjust my thinking. You were excited and, at the same time, oddly apprehensive. You kept asking me what you should do if something happened and you weren’t comfortable with Joe Don. You said over and over that it wasn’t ever safe for a girl to be alone on the street, that bad things—really bad things—could happen. It made me wonder if you’d known about your mother’s suspicions regarding your father, or if it had to do with just knowing about the murdered women who’d been the Hunter’s victims. When I pressed you for a reason as to why you were so sure something bad would happen, all you could say was that you “just knew.”
    Of course, the date with Joe Don turned out fine, and when I asked you later if you were nervous when you were with him, you rolled your eyes and gave me one of those looks for which women are famous. It made me laugh, but at the same time, it set a fear in my heart that you were suppressing memories far darker than I’d realized you might have. I don’t know how to explain it, but, my darling Holly, I fear for you most of all. Be careful. Be aware. I fear you have seen terrible things—so terrible that it was worth forgetting the first five years of your life.
    Holly shuddered as she leaned back and looked up. The dining area was buzzing with hungry customers. She wondered how many of them were living with secrets—secrets that could be as deadly as the most fatal of diseases.

Three
    W hen she got back to her room, the message light on her phone was blinking. It was from the front desk telling her she had a delivery. Surprised, she told them to bring it up, then spent the wait time wondering what it was and whom it was from.
    Although she’d been listening for it, when the knock finally sounded at the door, Holly jumped. After a quick look through the security view, she opened the door to find a bellman with a vase of red roses.
    “Oh, my!” she said, as the bellman set the flowers on the table. She handed him a tip, closed and locked the door behind him, then dashed back to see who the roses were from.
    She pulled out the card, quickly scanning the few words of text.
    Remember, you’re not alone. I’m only a phone call away. Bud.
    Bud—ever faithful Bud. She burst into tears.
    She crawled onto the bed with the card still clutched in her hand and curled into the fetal position. Sobs bubbled up her throat as the past two weeks of shock and fear overwhelmed her. If Bud had been standing in the room beside her bed, she would have begged him to take her home and abandoned this search. Something bad had happened to her here. She couldn’t remember what, but she could feel it. Bud was the one sure thing still left in her life, but he was halfway across the country, and she was here alone.
    She cried herself to sleep.
     
    Sunlight spilled through a pair of kitchen windows into the room. An half-eaten bowl of cereal was still on the table beside a box of Cheerios that had tipped over, spilling part of the contents. Water was running from the tap at the kitchen sink, only no one was there.
    A shadow suddenly cut across the path of sun light. Something dripped onto the floor. The shadow moved, then disappeared, leaving behind a trail of bright red droplets.
    “Clean it up!” he yelled. “And don’t