Free The Sinner by Amanda Stevens Page B

that old tragedy have to do with the present-day murder of the woman I’d found in the mortsafe? And how was any of this the business of Darius Goodwine?
    I remained motionless, pondering question after question as the engine ticked down and the shadows across the lawn grew longer. The day was coming to an end and the house seemed to be waiting.
    Which was ridiculous. Nothing had changed about that place except for my perception.
    Shivering in the late-afternoon heat, I climbed out of the vehicle and locked the door. But instead of going inside, I headed for the backyard where I could hear Angus pawing at the wooden gate in excitement. The fenced property gave him ample room to safely roam while I worked, which was a nice change from our tiny backyard in the city.
    The moment I opened the gate, he bounded through, but then drew up short, as if he’d momentarily forgotten his wariness. His continued reticence tore at my heart and I wished, as I always did when he seemed so guarded around me, that I knew some easy way to earn back his affection.
    There was a time when Angus had trusted me completely, but his canine senses were even more attuned to the supernatural than mine and the progression of my gift unnerved him. He was all too aware of the changes inside me and sometimes still I would catch him watching me with those dark, soulful eyes as if to say, I know who you are but I don’t know what you are and that worries me.
    We’d made some headway during the past year, but he wasn’t yet ready to accept me wholeheartedly. Until such time, I could do nothing but give him his space. The same as I had done for Devlin.
    Kneeling, I put out a hand so that he could catch my scent. He eyed me from a safe distance. When he finally ambled over, he didn’t relax as he once would have done, but instead held himself in rigid acquiescence as I stroked his scarred head and scratched behind his ear nubs.
    â€œI know,” I murmured, smoothing the fur on his back. “I know you don’t like the changes inside me. I don’t like them, either. But there’s nothing I can do about them.”
    Unless I located Rose’s long-lost key. Unless everything I’d heard about it was true. That still seemed a remote possibility, an improbable fairy tale, but if the key I wore around my neck could hold the ghosts at bay temporarily, who was to say another key couldn’t lock them out forever?
    Angus put up with my attention for as long as he could stand before trotting off to explore the front yard. He wouldn’t go beyond the ditch. No matter his reservations, he still felt protective of me and for that I was both humbled and grateful.
    I let him nose around for a bit and then called to him to follow me into the backyard. As I closed the gate and turned, my gaze lifted to the flat roof of the shed jutting up through the treetops. The outbuilding was located at the back of the property, separated from the marsh by a salt-tolerant forest of loblolly pines and from the backyard and house by a small grove of orange trees.
    As best I could tell from the windows and roofline, the shed was divided into three distinct rooms, one leading back into the other in the shotgun fashion of an old farmhouse. The structure looked to be in decent condition so I assumed someone had taken care of it over the years. It was painted white like the house with a high window on either side of the front room to allow in light. On a few occasions, I’d stood on tiptoes and taken a peek through the glass, but other than a jumble of old furniture, boxes and garden tools, I hadn’t been able to tell much about the interior.
    I sat down on the back porch steps, my gaze still fixed on the roof. As the horizon deepened, the moths came out, flitting among the bee balm and catmint that grew at the side of the porch. The breeze blowing in from the sea was cool and fragrant, and I could hear music somewhere in the distance. Closer