Mind Games

She never went back to the prison. Her life now looked forward, and she told herself Riggs lived in the past, locked in it.

Then it stood, her two-story cottage of mountain green with a blue front door, with its wraparound porch, tucked back in the rolling hills. She’d added the small deck Maddy insisted on just outside the French doors of her main bedroom.

And already imagined herself sitting out there on quiet nights, on quiet mornings.

She considered her gaming studio a source of pride, and had arranged it so its windows faced the hills—and the chicken coop Knobby built her.

She’d get a half dozen hens, but leave the milk cow and goat to her grandmother.

And one of these days, a dog. Settle first, she thought, standing, looking, the keys warm in her hand.

Settle through this fall and its riot of color, and through the winter when the wind blew cold and fires simmered in the hearths.

She’d put wind chimes and witch bottles all around, add some fairy lights to the trio of young redbuds in her front yard.

And plant a garden, her own garden, next spring.

She’d fill her home with flowers, candles, and pretty things. She’d tend the land around it.

She’d worked for this, yes. But she wouldn’t have it without what her parents had given her, what her grandmother had given her.

This home was hers, she thought, but never hers alone.

She’d do good work in it, she promised herself, and make good food so she deserved the kitchen she’d designed over countless dreamy days and nights. Cook meals for her family, and be a good neighbor to Miss Leona.

She had work she loved, and she was good at her work. Maybe it still surprised her she and Milken had built a franchise with the Endon series of games, but even the surprise of it satisfied.

She thought of that day in her grandmother’s kitchen, and Rem talking about merchandizing.

Well, she thought now, he’d been damn smart to lock that in.

She worked hard—that seemed to be a Fox/Lannigan/Riley trait. She’d decided the luck of enjoying the work came from the same sources.

Now another phase of her life stretched behind her, she realized. And another beckoned, just ahead.

In the kicky October breeze, she stood on land that belonged to her, then slowly walked to the house she’d built in her dreams.

Unlocking the door she didn’t intend to lock again, she went in to light the fires and the candles.

Chapter Fourteen

Until the day she died, three years after Thea moved into the house, Leona lived a good, strong life.

Around ten on that windy February night, Thea felt her go, just slip away from one world and into the next.

She left Thea a pretty teapot decorated with dragonflies Thea knew Leona had prized.

Thea missed her, missed seeing smoke curl from the chimney, a light in the window.

Bunk, Thea’s Bernese mountain dog, missed her, too, and the biscuit she’d always have for him when he paid her a call.

That spring, when Thea planted her garden, she wondered how long the house would stay empty. Leona left it, and all in it, to her great-grandson. He hadn’t come to the funeral—something about his little boy being sick—but she wondered why he had yet to make the trip down. Either to take over his inheritance or make arrangements to sell.

She did her work, tended her garden and her chickens, walked down with Bunk to Lucy’s often.

Every year on the anniversary of her parents’ death, she stood with Lucy and Rem and put hydrangeas on their grave.

And every night on that day, the lock on her window slipped. Ray Riggs came calling.