Page 77 of One Last Promise

“Don’t play that game with me, Tillie. I know about the . . . cookies.”

“Cookies?” Hazel asked, turning.

“For the love, Roz.” Tillie spoke to Hazel. “No, not cookies.”

She looked again at Roz, cut her voice low. “How do you know that?”

“Your sister. She was worried. Under the patio is a terrible place to hide a hundred thousand . . . cookies. She said it numerous times. So . . . we moved it.”

Tillie’s mouth opened.

“You remember when you bought the playset? And put pavers on the patio?”

“Yes. That’s when Pearl buried the suitcase.”

“And I deposited the money. In a safe deposit box.”

Of all the things that might have issued from Roz’s mouth—“What? A safe deposit box?”

“Yes. C’mon, Tillie. You don’t leave that kind of”—she dropped her voice low—“moneyunder your fire pit.”

“You do if you can’t go to a bank and get it!” She shook her head. “How do I even find it?”

“It’s under the name Alicia Torre.”

The name she’d used to escape to Alaska. Alicia Torre, and her sister, Henrika, and her daughter, Aurora. “How do you know that name?”

“Please. I was the one who directed you to Hecktor to get new passports. I made him tell me.”

Right.

“Okay, so . . . what bank?”

“Northern Skies.”

Tillie didn’t know what to do with the rush of feelings. Riggerhadn’tfound the money. Which meant that Riggerhadn’t found the money. Which meant he was still out there.

See, this was why she needed to run.

“Okay. So, how do I get it?”

“There’s a key in my house. It’s on the lawn mower key chain.”

“That’s safe.”

Roz lifted a shoulder. “Hiding in plain sight, right?”

Tillie shook her head.

“And by the way, the phone is there too.”

The what?“What are you talking about?”

“Pearl gave me a secret phone. I think it was her old one, from Florida. Told me to keep it safe—that if anything happened to you or if Rigger showed up, I was supposed to give it to you.”

“Pearl had a secret phone?”

Roz wore her cop face. “Yes. Your sister wasn’t always . . . well, she had some smarts.”

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