Her sister had given her one of those eye-rolling looks. “I’d appreciate it right now since I’m not going to college.”

Kat hadn’t pushed it, but she wanted more than anything for her little sister to get an education. Em didn’t have any idea how much fun college could be. But Kat did. Her best friend, Elizabeth, could attest to the good times they’d had. Kat had taught her to loosen up and Elizabeth had taught Kat how to study—the only reason Kat had gotten her degree. Elizabeth had also encouraged her to go into criminology and open an agency with the money Kat’s father had left her. It had been the best two things Kat had ever done.

To her surprise, it was almost seven by the time she finished the filing. She walked to the Witch’s Brew to finally meet Ross, her real online blind date, hoping he’d make her forget all about her mystery date from the night before.

JONAH CLIMBED UP the back stairs to his apartment over the bar, checking to make sure no one had been inside since he’d left. He knew Brody had a spare key and had come in while he was gone this morning. No doubt to look around for proof that Jonah was as down on his luck as he’d said.

But this time, the short piece of dental floss he’d left out of habit in the door was still in place and the second-story windows were still locked. He knew nothing had been touched as he glanced around, a deep gut knowing. The intensity of the feeling scared him, making him only too aware what being back in Moriah’s Landing was doing to him. Another cause for concern.

The apartment looked worse than it had last night—and that was saying a lot. Last night he’d been too exhausted to care if it resembled a Dumpster—it already smelled like one. The moment he’d opened the door with the key his cousin had given him, he caught the entrenched scent of long-ago fried fish and spilled beer. The plasterboard walls had holes in them the shape of fists, a sure sign of what kind of renters had been here before him.

The place was small. Just a studio, with the orange shag carpet of a lost bad era, a lumpy stained gold couch that doubled as a bed, two mismatched kitchen chairs with bent legs, an ancient metal table with unimaginative graffiti carved in the top and a makeshift kitchen with a fridge that ran all the time.

The bathroom was so small he could barely turn around. It contained only a toilet and a standing metal shower stall. No sink. But as Brody said, “There’s a sink in the kitchen, and hell, it’s better than living on the street, right?”

Jonah would have much preferred the street. But living over the bar fit better into his plans. He closed the blinds and reached under the couch, pushing aside the ripped underlining for the thin shelf he’d attached to the frame. Carefully he withdrew the small, state-of-the-art laptop he’d sneaked in early this morning with the groceries, and booted it up.

Last night he’d been anxious to get on the computer, but Brody had kept him up most of the night, giving him the third degree about his expulsion from the FBI. Then he’d had his first shift at the bar early this morning, no doubt just so Brody could search his room.

Anxiously, he now typed in his access number, waited for the satellite online connection, then found himself typing “The Landing Gazette, archives, obit, Ridgemont.”

He told himself he was just curious. Kat said she was three when her mother died. If the mother had died in Moriah’s Landing…A list of obituaries for Ridgemonts appeared on the screen. Only four were female, two were much too old to have been Kat’s mother, the third too young. He brought up the fourth obit, startled by what he saw. Kat was the spitting image of her mother, Leslie Ridgemont, at the same age.

But that wasn’t the only thing that shocked and scared him. Kat’s mother had been murdered.

He clicked back to the archives and called up the stories on the murder, becoming more intrigued and worried as he read. The body had been found in the gazebo just feet from the witch-hanging tree on the town green—and only yards from the house where Kat lived.

A chill washed over him. The twentieth anniversary of Leslie Ridgemont’s death was only days away. He didn’t need to check the Farmer’s Almanac to know that the moon would be full on that night—just as it had on the night of her death.

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