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Her eyes wide, her hands beginning to shake, Tess read:
Dade and Sheree went up the hill,
    With Joey right behind them,
    Now Dade is dead and Sheree’s ill,
    And Joey’s leg can’t find him.
    If Dade was one, and Sheree two,
    And Joey number three,
    Who will be next? Could it be you?
    Why don’t we wait and see?

Chapter 6
    I DELIVERED MY LITTLE note to Tess. I hope it shakes her up. A lot. Serve her right.
    She doesn’t even know why. No one does. No one knows what I found in the attic. I’ll tell them when I’m good and ready.
    The little red book held secrets. I kept reading, that hot, sticky day a few weeks ago, before the air had turned cool and crisp.
    After Tully O’Hare went to the bank to get a loan from his friend Buddy, Lila O’Hare wrote:
    I can’t believe it! Buddy turned us down. He and Tully have been friends since grade school. Now Tully is drowning and Buddy won’t throw him a rope.
    Why not?
    And what are we going to do now?
    Bad Buddy the banker. Who was he? If there was a banker in town named Buddy, I’d never heard of him. Maybe he’d dumped the nickname. Maybe he’d dumped the bank. The journal was dated a long time ago. Years ago. Lots of things could have changed in that time.
    The next entry explained the one before it.
    We found out why Buddy turned us down at the bank. He and a bunch of his friends want The Boardwalk! As an investment. They say they have the funds to turn it into a huge money-making proposition. And we don’t.
    But it’s ours! It’s all we have. They can’t take it from us, can they?
    Why was I so sure the answer to that question was yes, they can. Maybe from watching my father make so many deals over the years. He had the money and the power, and he always won.
    I was right. Because the next entry read:
    It’s gone. The Boardwalk. Buddy and his friends now own it. Tully is devastated. So am I.
    What will happen to us now? How will we take care of our baby when it gets here?
    The next few pages were blank.

Chapter 7
    T HE BLOOD IN T ESS’S veins turned to sleet as she read, and then reread, the note’s purple words.
    Who will be next? What did that mean? Next, as in, next after Dade and Sheree and Joey? As in, look what happened to them?
    Sheree’s ruined face swam before Tess’s eyes. Then Dade’s lifeless body did the same, and Joey’s leg …
    Her knees, which had been threatening all evening to buckle, did so now. Her body slid down the cabinet until it collided gently with the floor. She still held the note in her hands, clenched so tightly her knuckles were blue-white. Unable to stop herself, she glanced down at the little square of paper again.
    The purple letters hadn’t rearranged themselves into a friendlier message. The words still conveyed the same ugly, threatening meaning.
    Her mind, fogged by shock and exhaustion, fought to make sense of it. Was it a joke? Who did she know with such a bizarre sense of humor? And if it wasn’t a joke, then what was it?
    She read it one more time. How could the meaning be mistaken? Wasn’t it proof that what had happened tonight at The Boardwalk was no accident? Or could someone with a twisted sense of humor simply be using the crash to scare her? Hinting that something else equally horrible might be in the works, just to tease her?
    No. That would be too cruel. No one she knew had such a sick sense of humor.
    Okay, then. How about someone she didn’t know? Was that possible? There were people like that, weren’t there? People who thrived on tragedy and horror and used it for their own benefit? Like people who read about kidnappings and then send a fake ransom note to the parents? Couldn’t the person who had written this purple poem be someone like that?
    Tess stood up. She kept her eyes away from the blackness of the windows and the French doors. The person who had written the poem could be watching. Watching her. His or her sick, horrid eyes could, at this very instant, be fixed on her building.
    I