LITMIR.BIZ

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here,” she told Cameron, an unnecessary direction. Cam was on her hands and knees, moaning, trying and failing to scrabble backward away from the living room and the vomit. She bumped up against the hallway wall and ducked her head into her hands, eyes squeezed tightly shut. She wasn’t going to be of any help.

      Careful to avoid stepping in the blood, Emma moved along the edges of the living room. Tommy’s bedroom was down the hall. It was dark. There were no sounds but Cameron’s low keening, which sent shivers down Emma’s spine.

      “Please,” she said, uncertain to whom the plea was directed. Please don’t let this be Tommy’s blood. Please don’t let him be hurt. Please don’t let him be dead. Please please please please please.

      His door was shut. She steeled herself, took two deep breaths. The smell was worse here, tighter, fresher. Almost alive in its awfulness.

      She opened the door, flipped on the light.

      Screams.

      Over and over and over again.

      Screams.

Chapter 2

      Georgetown

      SIRENS RENT THE night air.

      The wailing jolted Dr. Samantha Owens from sleep. She listened for a moment, heard them growing louder. They were close. Too close. Several of them, caterwauling through the night as they came near. Instead of peaking and fading, blue lights suddenly flashed on the opposite wall of her bedroom, rotating frantically. The sirens ended with a squawk, but the lights continued their alternating strobes. Based on the angle of the flashes, they’d stopped on O Street.

      Her home in Georgetown was generally quiet and calm in the darkness. A few drunk kids every once in a while, hollering as they wound their way back to campus, but rarely something like this.

      Clearly, something terrible had happened.

      Sam was used to sirens. Living in the city meant they were a regular, nightly, daily occurrence. Sirens used to be the precursor to her part in the festivities, so she always registered their noise. Sirens used to mean her phone was going to ring, and she’d have to drop everything and rush to a crime scene. But that was another life, in another city. One she tried very hard to put behind her.

      Her phone wasn’t going to ring, but habits die hard. She glanced at the clock—one in the morning.

      She got up, pulled a brush through her shoulder-length brown hair, slipped a warm cashmere sweater over her thin T-shirt, pulled on black leggings and a pair of leather ankle boots. Grabbed a pashmina and tossed it around her shoulders.

      Autumn was in full swing, and the late-September temperatures had dropped precipitously over the past week, making D.C. shiver. The bedroom, too, was cold, empty of Xander and his internal furnace. He was on assignment, a close-protection detail with one of his old Army buddies, Chalk. Trevor Reeves Worthington III on his driver’s license, but Chalk forever to his Army mates, named for his propensity to write everything down.

      It had only been three weeks since Xander and Chalk had hung out their shingle, made the business official, and they’d already been in high demand. She was glad to see Xander reengage with the world, though she had to admit, it was a bit of a shame. She liked the idea of him up in the woods with Thor at his side, doing his best Thoreau, leading the occasional fishing party, hiking solitary through the woods. The new gig was intense, all-hours, and took him away too much for her liking. Plus, his main job was to throw himself in front of a bullet should the need arise, and she wasn’t at all comfortable with the thought.

      She started down the stairs, whistled for Thor. The German shepherd was waiting for her already, ears pricked. She knelt beside him, buried her face in his fur. He was warm, like his daddy, had been curled in a ball in his sheepskin bed, dreaming doggy dreams. He nuzzled her and licked her on the nose gently, then went to stand by the door, alert and ready.

      “Let’s go out the back, baby.”

      He hurried to her side, and she fastened his lead. She opened the back door, was rewarded with a gust of chilly air, and the voices that carried from the other side of her privacy fence.

       You have stooped to a new level, Owens, trying to eavesdrop on a crime scene.

      But she went to the far fence, skirting the eternity pool, Thor stuck to her leg like glue. Put her head against the wood. If she turned slightly sideways, she could see through the double slats.

      It was so familiar, the shouts and calls. The first responders were there, the police, too. An ambulance was parked on the corner. As she watched, EMTs scrambled toward it with a stretcher. One was kneeling on the gurney itself, straddling a body of indeterminate sex, performing CPR with single-minded intensity.

      The open doors of the ambulance blocked the rest. Moments later, they slammed shut and it left in a hurry, sirens wailing. The fire trucks followed, calm now, big beasts rumbling into the night.

      The police stayed.

      Definitely not a good sign.

      She wondered if her friend Darren Fletcher, the newly minted homicide lieutenant, would show. She didn’t know why she assumed it was a homicide, or an attempted homicide, given that someone had been brought out at a rush. It could be anything. More than likely, at this time of night, it was a simple domestic dispute. Someone was punched, had a bloody nose, a black eye, then things got out of control. She ran through the neighbors she knew on O Street, people she’d waved to when walking Thor, imagining them in various states of fury and undress.

      Maybe a heart attack. Or a stroke. Embolism, aneurysm, overdose.

       God, you are cheery, aren’t you?

      She heard one of the cops say, “Hernandez, while you’re at it, go ahead and call the OCME. We’ll need them.”

      And she knew. Something inside her gave a little buzz. Death comes in all forms, from all directions. Expected or by surprise, it was the greatest common denominator, the great equalizer. She felt an affinity with the grimness, couldn’t help that. But she had a choice, now. A choice to walk away from the carnage, from the horror. To face death on her own terms, especially since she’d agreed to work with the FBI on their more esoteric cases. A deal made all the more tantalizing because they wouldn’t be dragging her out of bed in the middle of the night to parade, yawning, to a crime scene, where she’d face death in all its incarnations, as she had for so many years as a medical examiner.

      She had a more immediate choice, as well. She could open the gate, walk around the block, stand with the crowd of neighbors who’d come to watch the show. Or she could go back inside and return to bed. She’d be able to get several more hours of sleep if she went inside now.

      You’re not the M.E. anymore, Sam. She stepped away from the fence.

      Thor took advantage of the nocturnal walk to do his business, then she followed him into the silent house, feeling strangely hollow. As she closed the door behind her and watched Thor scoot back to bed, something made her pull out her cell phone and send Fletcher a text.

      What’s up on O Street?

      She knew it wasn’t too late for him; he was a night owl, especially now that he was seeing FBI Agent Jordan Blake. He’d be up, one way or another. She sent another, this time to Xander.

      Miss you.

      She poured herself a finger of Ardbeg, thought about it, brought the bottle with her to the couch. Sat down. Took off her boots.

      Waited.

      Didn’t know exactly what she was waiting for.

      She spared a glance at the file folders on the coffee table in front of her. She’d left them scattered carelessly in frustration before climbing the stairs to bed. Crime scene and autopsy photos spilled out of the manila folders, coupled with her notes and Baldwin’s notes and toxicology reports, all jumbled together

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