Page 27 of The Murder Club

He handed her the strand of pearls. “Are you worried someone tricked you into buying imitation jewelry? Or that it’s stolen merchandise?”

“I didn’t buy the necklace,” she muttered, dropping the pearls on the table. “It just showed up.”

“What do you mean, it showed up?”

“I found it in an envelope on the back porch when I got home.”

“You don’t know who left it?”

“No.”

His initial concern returned with a vengeance. Gage Warren might not be pounding down the door, but she was frightened.

“Tell me what’s going on.”

She wrapped her arms around her waist. “I don’t know and it’s scaring me.”

Dom nodded toward the couch. “Sit down. I’ll make us some tea.”

She obediently dropped in the nearest chair, but she sent him a warning glare. “No sugar.”

“Got it.”

In silence, he heated the kettle, covertly studying her tense profile as she chewed her lower lip. Once the tea was brewed, he returned to the table, placing the cup in front of her before taking a seat.

“Start at the beginning,” he requested, sensing Bailey hadn’t been fully prepared to share her troubles with him.

“Okay.” She took a sip of tea as she squared her shoulders. As if she needed to gather her courage. “About a year ago I joined a group called the Murder Club.”

“Murder Club?” Dom arched a brow. “Like a mystery dinner with actors?”

“No, it was all online and the cases are real,” she explained. “I figured that anyone who lived in Pike is an expert in murder. Plus, I have my nursing degree. It comes in handy with any medical questions.”

Dom nodded. “Kaden mentioned there was more than one serial killer who passed through Pike. And that the town was compared to the murder capital of the United States,” he agreed. “And I don’t doubt that you would be fantastic. While we were preparing for the wedding it was obvious you have a rare attention to detail and an incredible memory. I was just thinking that an online game doesn’t seem like your kind of thing.”

“It isn’t really.” She shrugged. “But I was bored. Lia was spending her time with Kaden and the winters in Pike can be brutal. There was nothing to do but stay home. The Murder Club seemed like a fun way to pass the evenings.”

“What did you do in the club?”

“Someone would present a crime that was unsolved or had been classified as an accident and we would search through the clues to try to solve the case.”

Dom had a vague memory of a documentary that focused on regular people who combined their various expertise to study unsolved crimes. Obviously it was more common than he realized.

“Did you have any success?”

She took another sip of the tea, a hint of color returning to her cheeks. “Not officially, but I think we managed to come up with a few reasonable conclusions.”

“So what happened?”

“A couple of weeks ago I started to get strange DMs in the chat room.”

Dom’s jaw tightened. Being pestered with unwanted attention was the bane of every woman who just wanted to be in a public space, whether virtual or online.

“Were they sexual invitations?”

She shook her head. “They said I’d earned an invitation to a private murder club.”

Which Dom assumed was another way to lure Bailey into a vulnerable situation.

---