will be.” And you will be. No matter what he had to do, she would be safe.
* * *
IT WASN’T HER first B and E. Not really. Long ago, she’d broken into a cabin with her boyfriend. Their car had broken down on a lonely Colorado road. The snow had rolled in, and they’d needed some shelter for the night.
She hadn’t known they’d find death out there. She hadn’t realized only one of them would ever walk out of that cabin.
“You ready?” Mac asked her.
Elizabeth forced herself to nod. This wasn’t some abandoned cabin. This was a house in Austin. They were in the middle of a neighborhood. Totally safe.
Right?
He did something to the lock. She saw the flash of a pick—the guy had come prepared—and there was a faint click. Then Mac was heading inside the house, turning on lights and quickly shutting the door behind them.
It was eerie being in a dead man’s home. Everything just looked...frozen. There was a coffee mug near the sink. A folded newspaper was on the kitchen table. A shirt was thrown over the back of the couch.
“You didn’t know he was in town?” Mac asked her.
She shook her head. “That’s weird, right? That he was here...that I was here...” A coincidence? Or something more?
“I did some checking on him,” Mac said as he began to open desk drawers. She noticed that he’d put on gloves. “Apparently, he’d written a few books in the past few years.”
She stood in front of Steve’s bookshelf. Elizabeth scanned the titles. “A Knife in the Dark. Murder in the Suburbs.” Elizabeth glanced back at him. “S.R. Yeldon... I know these titles. They’re all true-crime books.”
Mac moved to a new drawer. “Right. The guy made his living by taking cold cases and solving them.” He exhaled on a long sigh. “Something I admire. Wish I could have met him.”
Her heart beat a bit faster. “He must have been working on a story about Nate.” That was the only thing that made sense.
“The cops confiscated his computer, so we won’t have access to that.” He headed into the bedroom and she quickly followed. “But I’m betting he kept some kind of notes. Some backup...something.”
He opened the closet door. She crept closer to him. He was really confident on this whole break-in thing. “What happens if the cops find us here?”
“We’ll get arrested.”
Her eyes widened. “You’re the one who made me confess all to that detective! And now you—”
He laughed. “Don’t worry. I’ve got an in at the PD I can always use. I was just messing with you.”
That wasn’t reassuring. She didn’t think he’d just been messing with her, either.
“What do we have...here?” He reached up and pulled down a brown bag from the top of the closet.
Her brows climbed. “You have a suitcase. That’s exactly what you have—”
He opened it. Notebooks and photos spilled out.
“Okay, I’m impressed.” She knelt on the floor next to the photos. “How did you know that anything was in there?”
“Because all of the other bags were covered in a layer of dust. This one wasn’t.” He started thumbing through the photos. After a few moments he gave a low whistle. “This is you.”
She peered over his shoulder. Yes, that was her. A shot of her that had been taken right after Nate’s murder. A police officer was pushing her into the back of a patrol car.
For just a moment, a memory of that scene flashed into her mind. So strong and clear.
“Miss...what happened here last night?” The cop’s eyes had been kind.
At first, anyway.
“There was so much blood.” She leaned forward and picked up another photo. Revulsion poured through her. That shot—it was one of the crime scene photos. Nate’s handsome face was so still, and the pool of blood beneath him was clear to see. So much blood.
“In the picture, you didn’t have any blood on you,” Mac said.
“No...no, I—I only touched him once. To see if he had a pulse.” But even then, she’d known it was too late.
Mac’s head tilted. “I need to know everything, Elizabeth. Just what went down in your past?”
Hell.
“You know you have to tell me.”
“I can’t tell you what I don’t know.” She saw another photo. This one was of the cabin’s exterior. The snow had been so white. It had been so cold. She’d been in that closet, shivering, for hours and hours before she’d heard the voices of the police officers.
“Elizabeth—”
“What’s in the notebooks?” That mattered. She reached for one, flipped it open, and she saw her name at the top of the page. Her name and age and—
Possible accomplice? The words were written in a rough script.
Her phone rang, making her jump and drop the notebook. She pulled out the phone and read the words on her screen. Unknown caller.
“Put it on speaker,” Mac instructed her.
She slid her finger over the screen and then hit the icon for the speaker.
“I know where you are,” the low voice told her.
“And I’m getting sick of you calling me,” Elizabeth fired back.
Mac’s gaze shot to her. It seemed like—admiration?—lit his stare.
“Don’t worry, Elizabeth. This will be your last call.”
A shiver slid down her spine.
“I knew you’d search his house. Did you find the surprise I left for you? Tick, tick...”
Mac swore. He grabbed her arm, dragging her to her feet. The photos and the notebooks fell from her lap.
“Stop!” Elizabeth said—the order both to Mac and the psycho on the phone. “I don’t know what you—”
“Goodbye, Elizabeth,” that voice told her. “You can’t hide this time. I see you. And the new lover. You’ll go out together in a blaze of fury.”
A blaze of... Understanding burst through her. He’d said tick, tick.
Mac dragged her out of the closet. “There’s a bomb! We need to get out of here!”
But the evidence was in there! They couldn’t
