“You? You’re the one who left the note?” Emily couldn’t imagine Mary Jean being so cryptic. True, she didn’t know the woman very well, but she was an extroverted person who seemed much more likely to speak openly about something important.
“I’m sure I’m the last person you thought would write to you under the cover of anonymity, but I have my reasons. You’ll be safe with Harry and I,” Mary Jean continued. “I’m not trying to make you paranoid, but at this point I wouldn’t advise either of you ladies to trust much of anyone around here.”
“Leroy isn’t involved in all of this, is he?” Leigh rubbed her eyes with fatigue and weariness of the secrecy. “We can trust our boss, can’t we?”
Mary Jean smiled. “Yes, Leroy is one of the good guys. Although I would warn you that the people besides him and Harry and I might not be.”
In a few minutes, Emily and Leigh were inside Harry and Mary Jean’s palatial mid century house. It sat on the outskirts of town on the opposite end of where Natasha and Wesley were apparently living, built with a view of most of Aurora. Leigh, the natural designer with her artistic eye, seemed to approve of the house.
“This is beautiful,” she said.
“Thank you,” Harry, the tall, lanky man with prematurely graying hair, said. “Mary Jean and I had it built after we married. We met on the band circuit. I was leading my group and one night I fell in love a singer in the other one. It happened that we were traveling through Vegas, so we got married and lived on the road about a year before we stopped for a show here and never left. I guess the place has a way of pulling you in.”
“I guess,” Emily agreed. “So what’s going on? Why am I in danger?”
“Natasha and Wesley fear that you know too much.” Mary Jean sighed. “They imagine that they’re working for people who have shady motives, but in truth, there’s no reason to fear those to whom they report. Have you noticed any strange lights or colors in the sky, Emily?”
“Only in a dream,” Emily replied. “I had a vivid one the other night. I was drawn to the house and there were dancing lights in the sky that even played flowers in the sand that grew. But most of all, I went inside and saw my dead husband sitting in a chair as if nothing had changed in our lives.”
Mary Jean gave her husband a knowing look before turning to look at Emily with tears in her big blue eyes.
Harry leaned in toward her, his face growing somber. “What if I told you it wasn’t a dream?”
“None of it? Even Julian…”
“No,” Harry shook his head. “Emily, you need to know that Julian is alive!”
Etcetera 