Free Haunting Beauty by Erin Quinn

children, victims in the Fennore Murders,” was all it said beneath the picture. But the photograph itself had already said so much more.
    She stared at her father’s face for a little while longer, but it was the last photo, one that showed a teenaged boy leaning against a blackened boulder, that made a wall of ice come down hard around Danni’s gut. The pictured adolescent was both defiant and desperate, facing a gale that chapped his cheeks and gave his eyes a glittering sheen. He was tall, wiry, not yet grown into his big hands and feet. With his dark hair blown wild and his shoulders hunched forward, he seemed to straddle the lines between youth and maturity. Still, a shadow of the man he would become stared back at her.
    Torn between bewilderment and rage, she looked into those insolent eyes. What game was Sean Ballagh playing with her? What lies had he told?
    Slowly she moved to the caption, feeling as if she were falling into an endless pit as she read the words printed there.
    “No,” she whispered, shaking her head while comprehension and disbelief battled within her. What it said couldn’t be true.
    And yet . . . Danni thought of this morning, how he’d appeared at her door without warning. She’d never seen a car or heard an engine, even when he left . . . and in his passport photo he’d looked so young—nearly as young as he did here. When she’d seen him standing on the other side of the window . . . the feeling that he’d been conjured from her thoughts . . . and the strange stares from the two women and their children when she’d been talking to him in the store. It wasn’t they who’d acted strangely, it was Danni, talking to herself . . . and when the lady who liked tea sets had said she had plans for dinner, she’d been answering Danni’s question to Sean, Will I see you later?
    No, it was impossible, even for Danni, whose life had suddenly become so fantastic. It didn’t make sense. Except in a small dark corner of Danni’s heart it made perfect, horrible sense.
    She read the caption under the photograph again, this time aloud, hoping the sound of her voice would bring new meaning to the words.
    “Sean Michael Ballagh, picture taken days before his murder. His body and that of an unidentified woman were the only remains found.”

Chapter Five
    T HE bell hanging over the door chimed, bringing Danni back to the antique store and sanity in a jarring instant. Yvonne strolled in, cell phone pressed to her ear. A tiny woman with short, curly hair and a round figure, she could light up the room with her smile or bring storm clouds with her wrath. She was grinning now as she said good-bye and snapped the phone shut.
    “Biedermeier birchwood vitrine . Two grand,” she announced proudly.
    Disoriented, shaking, Danni didn’t move from her stool behind the counter. Her mind continued to stutter around what she had just read. Sean Ballagh was dead. Her Sean. The man who’d visited her twice now . . . bearing airplane tickets. She scrambled to her purse to see if the envelope had suddenly vanished. Oblivious of anything but her own excitement, Yvonne went on about the Biedermeier. She’d been on the hunt for one of the German cabinets since a customer of theirs had raved about seeing one in Sedona.
    “It’s in near mint condition. One scratch down low and a broken drawer. Both can be fixed. Woman selling it is pissed off at her ex-husband and would have given it to me for less, but I didn’t want some court disputing the sale later. Did you hear me? Two grand for a Biedermeier.”
    Yvonne dropped her purse in the drawer under the counter and crossed the store to adjust one of the blinds.
    Realizing that Danni still hadn’t spoken, Yvonne finally turned and took a closer look. An instant later she was beside Danni. “What happened?” she demanded. “What’s wrong?”
    Danni opened her mouth to speak, but where did she start? How could she possibly tell Yvonne everything that had happened?