Page 58 of Possession

“Well, you are. He’s your best friend, Blake.”

Jack dumped a case onto the table. “I brought my equipment. Now are you going to bring me in on this little secret society crap you two have going?”

I opened the rice container and fished out the memory stick.

Blake snatched it out of my hand. “Remember the night someone broke into the old Stuart place?”

Jack nodded. “Sure, the beach house. I thought it was kids.”

“No. Someone’s been looking through the house for this. Or so we think, anyway.” He dropped the diary onto the kitchen island.

Jack picked it up. “Gracie dropped this last week. On the steps.”

Blake nodded, then he took it back from Jack. “It was a diary from her grandmother.”

Jack crossed his arms. “Something juicy in there, I take it?”

“It’s in some sort of code.”

“Like I-need-a decoder-ring deal type of code?”

I stepped forward. “More like codenames for people. I’ve figured out a few, but mostly, it seems to be some sort of shorthand to protect the not-so-innocent.”

Jack leaned his hip against the counter. “Are we in an episode ofPretty Little Liars?”

I laughed. “Good analogy, though not a show I’d figure you’d know. I don’t think there’s much murder involved, but we’re starting to wonder.”

Blake covered the diary with his palm. “It seems that people really want this diary.”

Unless there was something else even worse hidden in the house. But I didn’t want to think about that possibility. Imagining these men—or women or whoever the hell they were—digging around for my grandmother’s old secrets was awful enough.

The wordwhyhad become a continuous chant in my head.

Jack glanced down at me. “Where’d you find it, Nancy Drew?”

“I designed the stained glass over the back door. Sometime in the last five years, my grandmother replaced one of the panes with two pieces of Blake’s glass. She hid the diary in between the two panes.”

“Wow. Really?” Jack picked up the diary. “I guess it’s small enough.”

“They’ve been breaking into the beach house and systematically breaking all the decorative glass, so I went through the house for the last few weeks, double-checking every single corner.” I shrugged. “I found a book-sized pane that slid up. She must have been using it for years.”

“Well, damn. What’d the old biddy have on people? Blackmail? Sex, drugs, and rock and roll?”

“Be serious for half a second in your life, would you?”

Jack’s face sobered. “Look, son. I may make jokes, but I’m fucking serious about my friends. I’m just trying for a little levity in this crazy-ass story.” He shook his head. “You should have come to me weeks ago about this.”

Blake blew out a breath. “I thought you might be involved.”

Jack’s brows snapped down. “What? How could you?—”

I stepped between them. “Look, Jack. You didn’t tell him you were watching me, for one thing.” I smacked his arm. “Eww, by the way.”

Jack bunched up his shoulders. “I wasn’t spying on you in your underwear, Gracie. Just making sure all you were doing was using the house as a studio.”

“Yeah, well, both of you were keeping secrets.” I waved a hand in the direction of my lover. “When he found one of your cuff links at the house after the break-in, he went all Blake.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Blake asked.

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