The Lost Girls of Johnson's Bayou Read Online Free PDF

a long shower and go to bed early.” She gave Ginny a kiss on the cheek. “Just leave my bags in the kitchen. I’ll deal with them tomorrow.”
    Ginny pulled the dolly into the kitchen and unloaded her mother’s bags on the desk in the back corner of the kitchen. She grabbed the almost-empty container and hauled it upstairs with her to refill for tomorrow’s display. She balanced the wide container on her hip and the wall to unlock her apartment, but the instant she stepped inside, she knew something was wrong.
    She stood stock-still just inside the front door and felt the hair on the back of her neck rise. She listened for sounds that would indicate anyone was there, but all she heard was the quiet ticking of the kitchen clock. Scanning every square inch of the room, she tried to find something out of place. Something that would explain her fear, but everything appeared as it had when she’d left that morning.
    She started to move, but then a scent wafted past her nose. The faint smell of musk, like a man’s aftershave. Without a sound, she placed the container on the floor next to the door and walked toward her bedroom, leaving the door to the apartment wide open in case she needed to make a run for it. She stopped just outside the bathroom and reached around the wall with her hand to flip on the lights. Light flooded the tiny room, and one quick look was all it took for her to know it was empty. The curtain was pulled back on the bathtub, just as she’d left it that morning, so no one could be hiding inside, and the tiny bathroom didn’t have a linen closet.
    Easing down the hall, she reached inside her bedroom and turned on the lights. The room appeared undisturbed, and she was glad she’d left in a hurry that morning and left her closet door open. It was so small that she could see every square inch from the doorway, and no one lurked inside. Her bed was platform style with drawers for storage underneath, so no one could be hiding there.
    Relief washed over her and she plopped down on the bed, chiding herself for scaring herself half to death over nothing. She needed to get a grip on her overactive imagination. It had been getting worse for some time, but ever since her trip into the woods and her run-in with Paul Stanton, it seemed to be in overdrive. She pulled open the drawer on her nightstand to retrieve lip balm she kept inside and froze.
    Her diary had been moved.
    She leaned over for a closer look, but she knew it wasn’t where she’d left it. It wasn’t off by much, but she was almost anal about fitting it exactly into the corner of the drawer. Now, it lay about an inch from the side. Lifting the journal from the drawer, she inspected the bookmark. Just as she suspected, it was off. The pink flower that she always left peeking out from the top of the journal was buried halfway in the book.
    Suddenly, she remembered that she’d left the front door wide open and she jumped up from the bed, dropping her journal on the bed as she dashed out of the room. She slammed the door and slid the dead bolt into place, then leaned back against it, trying to slow her racing heart.
    No one but Madelaine had a key to her apartment, or the café, for that matter. And she couldn’t think of any reason at all that someone would break into her apartment to read her journal. She didn’t have much of value, but she kept a stash of cash in the same nightstand as the journal, and it was still there. It didn’t make sense. Why would anyone go through the trouble of finding an undetected way into the café and her apartment just to read the ramblings of a waitress?
    Paul Stanton!
    Ever since he’d grabbed her in the woods last night, he’d shown up everywhere she was. Granted, it was a small town, so that wasn’t hard to do, but Ginny didn’t believe for a moment that he’d picked Johnson’s Bayou at random for a vacation and then went roaming around the woods at night carrying a gun for relaxation.
    Then there was