The Cold Case Next Door

About this book:

Thirty years ago, Meredith Gray vanished from her Oak Creek home on Homecoming weekend. The case went cold. The town moved on. But when an anonymous note arrives at the struggling *Oak Creek Chronicle*—*The truth about Meredith wasn't buried in the woods. It was left in the house next door*—disgraced big-city journalist Julian Vance and reluctant hometown editor Maya Lin are forced into an uneasy partnership to investigate the one place Maya swore she'd never revisit: her own childhood home.

As autumn rain soaks the pines of upstate New York, Maya and Julian dig through decades of sealed files, faded memories, and the town's most carefully guarded secrets. Every lead pulls them deeper into the dark space between the Gray property and the house where Maya grew up—where a basement key has just surfaced in the mud, and someone is watching from the windows of an abandoned Victorian. Their professional rivalry crackles with unresolved tension, but the closer they get to the truth, the more dangerous the story becomes.

In a town where everyone knows everyone and the past is never truly buried, Maya and Julian must decide how far they'll go for the exclusive that could save their paper—and whether they can trust each other before the next headline reads *obituary*.