Page 118 of Buried Too Deep

Phin opened his eyes and they were filled with misery. “Or galleries.”

Cora flinched, her eyes going wide with shock. Shock quickly became fury. “No. It isn’t Patrick Napier. I didn’t even know him when those damn letters started. You’re wrong.”

Phin didn’t look away. “I hope I am.”

Dammit. Damn him. “You can’t be serious.”

But he was.

Cora looked to Burke, only to find him wincing. “Burke?”

“I have to admit that I hadn’t considered that, but Phin makes a good point.”

Cora’s heart was racing, and she was so angry. How dare they? “You’re forgetting that he didn’t know me then. He didn’t know my father. He didn’t know what color dress I wore on Christmas the year my father disappeared. This is insane.”

Burke looked at Phin. “She’s got a point, too.”

Phin sighed. “I’m sorry, Cora, and I hope I’m wrong. But how do you know that he didn’t know your father?”

Cora’s eyes burned and she shrank away from them, from their gazes full of pity and regret. Val too. Damn them all.

“He didn’t even live in New Orleans back then,” she shot back. “Tandy’s parents moved to New Orleans when Tandy and I were in the third grade. I met Tandy first. She invited me to a slumber party at her house. Then I invited her to mine and we became best friends. Her father helped us—Mama and Grandmother. He fixed things. He made sure our roof didn’t leak and that our faucets didn’t drip. He was there when I needed a father. He took me and Tandy to all those father-daughter dinners. He is not the letter writer. He is not.” She blinked, the tears in her eyes streaking down her cheeks.

Which just made her even angrier.

She turned her face away, staring out the window, needing a moment to compose herself.

They’re trying to help.

Cora knew the little voice in her mind was right. She was behaving like a child. But Harry and Patrick? No. No to both of them. Neither would hurt me. She couldn’t believe that either of them would have hurt her father, either.

Patrick had never even met her father.

How do you know?

She swallowed a sob. Because she didn’t know. She didn’t know anything anymore. Her life was out of control, a train tearing down a mountain slope, jumping the tracks.

Phin’s touch on her arm was tentative. Gone within a second. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I don’t mean to upset you. But someone’s after you, Cora, and I don’t want anyone to hurt you. But especially not me. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Cora shuddered out the sob she’d been holding back. “I know,” she whispered back. “Give me a second.”

“Do you know where Tandy and her parents moved from?” Val asked, her tone…odd.

Like she already knew the answer and Cora wasn’t going to like it. “Somewhere in Louisiana. I don’t remember where.” She wiped her eyes with the sleeves of her jacket and turned to face them. “Where, Val?”

“Thibodaux.”

Cora shook her head. Thibodaux was only thirty minutes from Houma. “No.”

Val nodded, sympathy in her blue eyes. “I just checked the property records for Lafourche Parish, just on a hunch. Just in case. Houma is in Terrebonne Parish, but Thibodaux is the parish seat of Lafourche. The property records show that Patrick Napier owned a home there until twenty-one years ago.”

That made more sense. “Twenty-one years ago,” Cora said triumphantly. “He didn’t arrive in New Orleans until two and a half years after my father was killed. Two and a half years after I started getting the letters.”

Val, Burke, and Phin shared a sober glance that made Cora’s stomach clench.

“It’s a coincidence,” she insisted.

Then heard herself. Could it be?

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