Chapter 17: Her Price

Tilda's POV

The knock came at half past four, while I was shaping the first rye of the day.

Emmett was asleep in my bed upstairs with a bag of frozen peas on his hand.

Gavin's garage video had sat in the board chat since the night before, with his line about the man holding my company under it.

I had read it once, and then I had put my phone in the flour bin.

I wiped my palms on my apron and went to the back door with a rolling pin.

Odette stood in the alley under the security light, in her green cardigan, holding a canvas tote against her chest.

"Alone," she said. "I swear."

"I'm not alone. He's upstairs."

"I know. I saw his truck." She almost smiled. "That's fine. I didn't think you'd be."

I let her in.

She didn't sit, and I didn't ask her to.

She set the tote on my steel counter and took out a white box tied with ribbon.

The ribbon had been retied.

"You left this on the table at Marchetti's," she said. "I took it home. I didn't know what else to do with it."

"Is it the dress?"

"It's the dress. I haven't touched it."

She put her phone down next to the box and slid it toward me.

"You said to bring something you could hold."

I picked up the phone.

It was open to a thread with one contact, saved as G.

I read from the top.

Tuesday 4am. Hood up, use the spare. Nobody looks at a woman's face on a bad camera.

Then, below it, her reply: What if she's inside?

Good. Let her be the one standing in the glass when the police come.

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