In each, there was evidence of Mason’s fair-mindedness. He’d offered smaller punishments in plea bargains to the offenders who complied with counseling and community service. He’d referred several defendants to Jonah’s support group.

I closed the last file and took a deep breath. This was not the behavior of a man hell-bent on revenge, let alone a man who’d use a woman he claimed to love. I had a choice—I either trusted Mason or I didn’t—and I had to choose right now.

I was following my heart.

With my decision made, I hurried into the kitchen and grabbed three bottles of water from the fridge. I was about to go out the back door when my phone rang. When I pulled it out of my pocket, I was surprised to see Neely Kate’s name on the caller ID.

The moment I answered, her breathless voice filled my ear.

“You need to get out here. We found something.”

Chapter 24

I dropped the bottles on the table and ran out the back door, Muffy hot on my heels. I didn’t stop until I opened the door and found Neely Kate standing outside a horse stall. The cabinets on the other side of the room had been completely removed, but Skeeter was nowhere to be found.

She looked over at me with a horrified expression on her face.

“What did you find?”

“Do you have the key?” Skeeter called out, his voice muffled. I was pretty sure he was behind the horse stall.

For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why Neely Kate was so freaked out. We’d already turned the barn inside out. What could they have found? And, more importantly, where?

“Yeah.” I pulled it out of my front jeans pocket as I walked toward the stall. Muffy stayed at my feet, acting subdued. “What did you find?”

I rounded the corner and found Skeeter had ripped out the feed trough, which now lay on its side. “Are you seriously going to tear my barn apart?”

“Rose,” Neely Kate said, “he found something.”

“You already said that. Why don’t you look happier?”

“I found a trap door,” Skeeter said, reaching out his hand. “Let me try the key in the lock.”

I moved closer and realized he’d discovered a two-foot square door that was flush with the dirt, and which looked to be encased by concrete. The door had a deadbolt with a keyhole and a handle. There was a shallow hole next to the concrete box, but Skeeter’s body and the darkness obscured my view. Both the hole and the box looked to have been previously covered by the feed trough.

“This is a good thing, right?” I asked. “Why are you so freaked out?”

“Skeeter found something along with it.”

“What?”

“A body.”

I gasped and took a step back, turning my attention to Skeeter. “What?”

Skeeter grunted his impatience. “It looks like it’s been there for years. He’s not goin’ anywhere. We need to see what’s in the box. Give me the key.”

I handed it to him and tried to look around him into the hole. How could I have lived here—been in this barn multiple times—without knowing there was a dead body buried under the rusted tin trough?

“How’d you know to turn over the feed trough?” I asked, trying to catch my breath as my mind whirled. “It was bolted down.”

He looked up and winked, apparently unbothered by the fact that he was squatting next to a corpse. “A trick from the depression. People didn’t trust banks, so they hid their money in lots of hidey holes. My great-grandmother used to hide things under her feed trough along with a whole lot of other places. I suspect the trap door was already here, but this lock looks like it’s only twenty to thirty years old. The grave was probably dug at around the same time.”

I heard a pop of metal, and Skeeter grabbed the handle on the door and lifted. He peered inside and pulled out a soft covered journal, folded over on itself and wrapped up with leather strings.

“How many journals can a damn person have?” he grumbled.

“Maybe she was an aspiring writer,” Neely Kate mused. “Maybe she thought she could write a memoir.”

“Or maybe she wanted to keep me from knowing this seedy part,” I countered. “The journal I found in her drawer was all personal stuff, nothing about any of the mess she was in except for vague insinuations. The journal in shorthand looked to be dates and figures with text.”

“So what about this one?” Neely Kate asked.

Skeeter handed it to me. “Only one way to find out.”

I took it, glancing over his shoulder. I could see clothing, but it was partially covered by dirt. “What about the body?”

“You take a look in the book, and I’ll see what I can find out. The safe seemed more pressing.”

I nodded and unwrapped the cords with slightly shaky fingers. I had no idea what to expect.

Neely Kate moved next to me while I unfolded the book and opened the cover.

“It’s in regular English,” she said in surprise.

I was equally stunned but also relieved to see that the writing was in Dora’s script in legible English, not the shorthand of the other journal and the page in the safe.

I’ve become more and more suspicious of the things going on at Atchison Manufacturing. Before it was just me, but now I have my baby to protect. With that in mind, I plan to create a record of how J.R. Simmons was introduced to Henry Buchanan and what occurred afterward.

I have done so many things wrong. I am not blameless in any of this. But I hope to find redemption. For my baby.

“What does it say?” Skeeter asked as he shined his flashlight into the hole.

“I don’t know yet,” I said, flipping the page. “It’s a whole separate journal.”

“But this one reads like a book,” Neely Kate said. “See? I told you she might be an aspiring writer.”

She was right, about the reading like a book part anyway. The next page started like a story. I read out loud, “The first time I first met J.R. Simmons, I was mesmerized by his good looks and charm.”

Skeeter snorted. “He’s like the angel of light, Lucifer himself. Is there anything we can use?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m not even sure what to look for. Sure, we can give this journal to the state police, but that won’t help us tonight.”