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Abby placed the box on the pillow-soft cos underneath her, then opened it and spread everything out in front of her—the letters, the journal, the property docues she captured on her phone of the Nazi paraphernalia—and stared at it all The items culminated to create one virtual question ether

Her grandfather owned property in Austria, purchased for him by a German soldier He appeared to be the Yoel Gutman from the journal, but his cousin—at least it’s the woman believed to be his cousin—insisted they were not related She also insisted he was not the Yoel rote it And whatever secret GG and Lawson discovered, it was big enough to get him killed, and if Laas murdered in the name of her secret so was McBride to cover it up

Then there was the storage unit and the chest Was it blackmail material? Certainly, if Lawson discovered Grandpa had been black a war criminal all these years, which is how he acquired his e news It would rock the foundation of their fas She was always one for justice Could this have been the secret? And if so, was the chest the randfather to Irma Mentz?

The only way Abby would know if the black Mentz Could he be the man Abby saw at the coffee shop? Did he sneak into her rooainst him?

Abby shuddered The idea of a Ger on her was beyond creepy

If her grandfather were blackh, there should beto him Abby just needed to find it and pray it had not been destroyed in Klein’s office

She shuffled the papers together and placed the out of bed, she made her way to her closet, but her reflection in the full-length ht her eye

A night of restless sleep hadn’t done her any favors Her hair tangled and puffed at the top of her head in a wild iant indentation from where the comforter had bunched underneath her ran from the side of her neck, down beneath the collar of her sleep shirt

She ran a finger over the angry mark, and a familiarity bloomed in her chest Needles prickled her spine at the flash of a scar in her head One she kneell

The irandfather’s neck came to mind She had been told it came froiven it to hi But

The hair rose on the back of her arh her head

“fauise More powerful than any drug,than any sin They can demand a loyalty that will rip your heart out and chew it up”

She tried to s but couldn’t Her tongue swelled in herbloomed in both her head and heart like poison The excerpt from the journal flashed in her head like a silent picture The one where Yoel Gut Jew struck the German officer they called The Butcher of Auschwitz

Abby shuffled back, unable to wrench her eyes away from the indentation in her skin that rerandfather’s, unable to see herself but instead seeing her grandfather His i from the top of his neck down to his clavicle The one he always tried to hide

She thought of the journal entry, recalling the words written there like they had imprinted themselves on her heart