Read Online Unraveled by Jennifer Estep - Free Book Online Page B

lengths of silverstone rebar, and other debris. The area looked pristine, and the rows of safety-deposit boxes gleamed as though they had all just been shined by hand. Maybe they had been, given Mosley’s attention to detail.
    â€œThis way,” Finn said.
    He led me to the back left corner of the vault. All the boxes were marked with small black numbers, and Fletcher’s box—1300—was the center box in a row of three across and three down. Nine boxes total, set off by themselves from all the others.
    Finn held the key out to me. “You found it, so you do the honors.”
    After Tucker had taunted me with the knowledge that my mother had been part of the Circle, I’d gone to Blue Ridge Cemetery to dig up her grave to see if Fletcher might have left a clue for me there, as he had in Deirdre’s empty casket. I’d found the safety-deposit box key buried in the dirt in my mother’s grave and had been wondering about it ever since.
    But now that we were finally going to open the box, doubt filled me, along with more than a little worry about what we’d find inside. What horrible secrets had Fletcher discovered about my mother? What hard truths about her had he hidden away for all these years? And how much would they hurt me now?
    â€œGin?” Finn was still holding out the key to me. “Are you okay?”
    I blew out a breath. “Yeah. Let’s do this.”
    Before I could think about it any longer, I took the key from him, slid it into the slot on the front of the box, and turned it. The lock clicked open, and I grabbed the handle and slid the safety-deposit box out of the wall. I carried the long, rectangular container to a waist-high table at this end of the vault and set it down there. Finn nodded at me, and I slowly lifted the lid of the box to reveal . . .
    A single sheet of paper.
    I frowned. Not what I was expecting. Not at all. Given all the photos and broken mementos that Fletcher had packed into the box in Deirdre’s casket, I’d assumed that this box would be filled to the brim with information too. But maybe the old man hadn’t had time to find out everything about my mother and the Circle. Maybe he’d just left behind a list of the members’ names. That would be more than enough for me to start tracking down Tucker and all the others, however many of them there were.
    Heart pounding, I reached for the paper. My fingers were trembling so badly that it took me three tries before I was finally able to grab hold and lift it out of the box. Finn moved to stand beside me, and I held the paper up where we could both see it to find . . .
    A rectangle drawn on the sheet.
    That was it. That was all. Just a large, simple rectangle drawn on a plain white sheet of paper.
    I turned it over, hoping that something was written on the back. A note, a phone number, an address. But nothing was there. I held it up to the light, thinking that maybe there was a rune, watermark, or some other faint symbol that I hadn’t noticed yet. Still nothing. Desperate, I stared at the front again, but it was the same as before.
    Nothing—there was nothing here. Fletcher hadn’t left me any clues about my mother, Tucker, or the Circle. Not a single one.
    Once again, I had zip. Zilch. Zero. Nada. A whole big fat lot of nothing. More damn nothing than ever before.
    â€œThat’s it?” I growled. “That’s all there is? You’ve got to be kidding me!”
    Disgusted, I tossed the paper down onto the table. The single sheet zipped across the smooth metal surface, floated through the air, and landed right in front of those rows of safety-deposit boxes. The whole bank of them looked like a doughnut now that Fletcher’s box was missing from the center. I glared at the paper, wondering if the old man was somehow mocking me from the great beyond. That’s certainly how it felt.
    Finn walked over and retrieved the wayward