LITMIR.BIZ

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      Alexandra Scott eased herself slowly into the closest chair at the kitchen table. Her eyes were still half closed even though she’d already showered, dressed and poured the obligatory mug of inky-black coffee that she needed to jump-start her day.

      Holding the oversize mug with both hands, she forced herself to take a deep sip of the brew. It tasted like hot sludge. Scottie hated black coffee, but she wasn’t drinking it for pleasure. She was drinking it because she had to. If she didn’t, she was liable to wind up sleepwalking through half her day—if not more.

      The strong, black liquid landed in the pit of her stomach, spreading out like an oil slick: thick and impenetrable. Slowly it flowed through her entire body, rousing everything in its path until the sum total of her was not only awake but keenly alert.

      Setting down the mug, the homicide detective took a deep breath and then blew it out again. Her breath made the wayward strands of dark blond bangs move ever so slightly.

      She pushed them back impatiently. She wasn’t one who fussed with her hair, but it would be nice if it could stay put.

      How was it that mornings kept arriving faster and faster these days? It felt as if she had just laid her head down on her pillow and here it was, time to get up again and face a full day.

      There should be a law, Scottie thought as she reached for the paper she’d automatically picked up at her front door and brought in with her, that mornings weren’t allowed to arrive until after a person had had six decent hours’ sleep. After all, it wasn’t as if she’d been out carousing, enjoying Aurora’s limited nightlife. She’d been out keeping the citizens of that same city safe so that they could enjoy carousing or whatever it was that people enjoyed doing these days. She really wouldn’t know about that. Working one job or another since before she’d turned eighteen, for the last few years she’d been a homicide detective and that had consumed almost all of her life.

      Not that she minded, but it would be nice to get a good night’s sleep every now and then.

      Stifling a yawn, Scottie blinked once and tried to focus on the newspaper in front of her.

      The local paper was her one attachment to her past. While everyone she knew got their news in sound bites or from the internet, Scottie still preferred to get hers from newsprint. Her late grandfather, the man she’d been named after, had been a journalist and, in a way, though the man had died when she was seven, reading the newspaper—when she had the time for it—made her feel close to the man.

      She missed those days. Missed not feeling as if the world was on her shoulders.

      “C’mon, Scottie, drink up. Don’t dawdle,” she urged herself under her breath. “You’ll be late for work and you don’t want th—”

      Scottie almost dropped the mug she’d raised to her lips. Moving like someone in a dream, she set the mug down, her eyes never leaving the story above the fold. The one she’d just fleetingly—and unconsciously—glanced at.

      She’d had no intention of reading any of the stories on page one. She’d only meant to glance at a few words here and there in passing, drink the rest of the vile black brew and go. But something had just jumped out at her, commandeering her eyes and grabbing her full attention. When she thought about it later, she wouldn’t have even been able to explain why. There was just something—something—about the story that forced her to sit up and actually absorb the words.

      Scottie got no further than the first three lines of the first paragraph before the taste of bile rose in her throat and filled her mouth at the same time she felt the pit of her stomach sink, pinching the sides together.

      No!

      “No, no, no, no!” she cried out loud, her voice bordering on outrage. “This isn’t happening. This has to be someone else. It has to be.”

      But even as she shouted the words at the news article on page one, Scottie had a sick feeling she wasn’t being paranoid.

      She was correct.

      Ethan.

      She had to call her brother and once she had him on the phone, he’d tell her she was wrong. Not in so many words, but by his tone, his inflection. By the unspoken hurt in his voice that she would even think he was involved. She’d known Ethan his entire life and she’d know if he was lying or trying to keep the truth from her.

      Willing her hand not to tremble, Scottie hit the number on her cell that would connect her directly to Ethan’s phone, all the while telling herself that this was just a coincidence. An awful, unsettling coincidence. She had worked much too hard to get him back to the straight and narrow and he had worked with her. He’d been clean and out of trouble for almost five years now. Five whole years.

      He wouldn’t do this.

      Not to himself.

      Not to her.

      “This isn’t you!” she fairly shouted at the newspaper as she listened to the phone on the other end ring.

      On the sixth ring, Scottie snapped to attention. She heard Ethan’s voice.

      “This is Ethan Loomis. I’m not available right now. Please leave a message and your number and I’ll get back to you.”

      Fear and anger had her throat suddenly so dry she could barely get the words out. “Ethan, this is Scottie. Call me. Now!”

      When she terminated the call, Scottie picked up the newspaper and finished reading the article.

      Her hands were shaking.

       Chapter 1

      “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

      Detective Bryce Cavanaugh watched in disbelief as his partner, Detective Peter Phelps, a tall, thin man whose suit jackets hung loosely off his body, packed the last of his personal items into a cardboard box. “You’re actually leaving?” Bryce questioned.

      “And they said you’d never amount to anything as a detective,” Phelps said dryly, tossing a half-empty bag of stale chocolate-covered wafers from last Halloween into the box. “Yeah,” the older man said more seriously. “You figured it out. I’m leaving.”

      “Was it something I said?” Bryce’s voice cracked, trying to cover up the fact that if this was on the level, it left him far from happy and somewhat surprised. He wasn’t averse to change, but he didn’t exactly welcome a major shake-up, either.

      “Hell, it’s everything you said,” Phelps answered tongue in cheek as he opened one drawer after another, checking for anything he might have left behind. “But if you’re asking why I’m leaving the police department, you don’t have anything to do with it.”

      Bryce took a seat on the edge of his partner’s desk, crossing his arms before him. “Then educate me, Phelps. Why are you suddenly spring-cleaning your desk two months late?”

      The frown on Phelps’s long, gaunt face went clear to the bone. “Alice’s mom is sick,” he said, referring to his wife’s only living parent.

      Bryce knew enough to look immediately sympathetic. “Hey, I’m sorry to hear that.” Still perched on the desk, he leaned in to get into his partner’s face. “But I still don’t see the connection.”

      Phelps put down a copy of the 1983 Dodger Annual yearbook for his favorite baseball team, pressed his thin lips together and sighed. The sigh sounded as if it came straight from his toes. “The kind of sick where she needs her family around her, doing stuff for her.”

      Bryce still didn’t see the problem. “So? Bring her out here. You’ve got those extra bedrooms since your kids went off to college—” He didn’t get a chance to finish.

      Phelps eyed him as if he’d lost his mind. “Look, I feel bad for her, but there’s no way that harpy’s moving in with us. Not unless

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