looked up at him from her perch on the stool. Her big blue eyes were full of sadness, and possibilities. It was enough to convince him she was onto something, despite the evidence to the contrary. Her need to prove that things had been the way she remembered them was strong, he got that. He understood why someone would want to preserve their memory of what had been—to prove what she knew to be true. But she was talking about events that happened when she was a young child, and since then she could easily have distorted things in her head.
Children were notoriously bad witnesses when any time had passed. Often they only wanted to tell adults what they wanted to hear—or what they themselves wanted to believe had happened. Was that the case here?
“Thank you, Wyatt.”
He nodded. The wall he could see in the living room caught his eye, so he trailed toward it. Nina jumped up and intercepted him. “Didn’t you just say you had to get back to work?”
Wyatt looked at her.
“There’s nothing interesting in there.”
Except that he thought there were printed pages or even newspaper articles tacked to the portion of the wall he could see. Why didn’t she want him to go in there and look? Nina wasn’t exactly hiding what she was doing. Parker and Sienna obviously knew about her looking into her mother’s murder, and she’d told him without too many qualms.
“If you say so.” But he didn’t believe her.
If she’d tacked pictures and news releases on the wall in her living room, this was clearly worse than he’d thought. It had consumed her daytime hours, which meant it also consumed her nights, too. Parker seemed to think she had to be reminded to eat. The signs were all there.
Nina was obsessed.
He understood why well enough. He’d been there himself even, but he knew what the end would be. If Nina kept going, either she would destroy herself trying to find the answers, or she would reach the end and find not even an ounce of the satisfaction she’d been looking for. She was going to wind up empty and exhausted with no answers.
“I guess I’ll be going then.” He stepped back. “Have a nice rest of your day.”
Wyatt walked to the door. That hadn’t been a great thing to say. Nina didn’t need the brush-off. What she needed was someone who could be compassionate to her situation—and that just wasn’t Wyatt. Sympathy, yes. But he didn’t know how much more he could give her when it would probably be unhelpful.
He turned back to her. “Be careful, and let me know if you need anything.”
But it couldn’t be denied she also needed someone who was going to tell her the truth—her father likely was her mother’s murderer. That the man she thought had done it didn’t have any reason to have killed her mom, not if they were in a relationship. She’d said herself that they had been happy, her mother and this “Mr. Thomas.”
“Goodbye, Wyatt.” Her voice was small, damaged. She didn’t sound anything like the self-assured former CIA agent he’d come to know.
A woman who had nearly died today.
Wyatt pulled out his phone before he hit the elevator. It rang twice and Sergeant Zane answered. “Hey, I need a favor.”
He felt better after he’d ordered regular drive-bys of her building to check for suspicious activity that could be another attack. There wasn’t much else he could do aside from 24-7 protection, but Wyatt still drove away racking his brain for other things that might help. Whoever had tried to kill her with that car would most likely try again.
And Wyatt was going to be there when he did.
The click of the front door echoed through the foyer. Nina’s socks whispered on the floor as she trailed to the living room. The walls were covered with sketches she’d done from memory after she’d learned how to properly execute a suspect drawing, but weren’t useful at all in identifying Mr. Thomas. Articles she’d printed from archived newspapers detailed her mother’s murder all the way through the investigation to the sentencing...and then finally her father’s death in prison.
It was a play-by-play of the worst days of Nina’s life.
She kept them up as a reminder and as a memorial. She couldn’t let anyone in, not without knowing their true motives. Nor was she prepared to open herself up—except to people like Sienna who convinced her otherwise. Not when there were people in the world who would slit a woman’s throat even knowing the woman’s child was on her way home.
Nina turned a full circle to look at the sum of her life now. Her search for the truth would enable her to move on, and the teaching job would begin the next chapter of her life. She just had to find Mr. Thomas before fall semester started.
The floor creaked.
She spun again, half expecting Wyatt to have come back for some forgotten thing. It wasn’t him.
Mr. Thomas stepped into the room.
He wore a suit, much the same as the last time she had seen him, years before. His hair was gray but still stylish, and his tan was highlighted by the pale lines on the sides of his face where he’d been wearing sunglasses.
“Hello, Nina.”
Nina’s feet were frozen to the floor, her muscles solid. “It’s you,” she said. The landline phone was three feet to her right on the end table beside the couch. Could she get there? What did he want?
Mr. Thomas’s cheekbones were high, his lips pursed as he surveyed her. For an old man, he was remarkably handsome. Probably in his seventies, at least, but he could easily pass for someone younger. Nina could almost see how a woman could fall for his charm—not knowing he was a murderer. A murderer who’d come to kill her.
“Why are you here?” The question left her lips before she realized she said it. Did she want to engage him or just run?
His eyes flickered. “You tell me, Little Mouse.”
Lunch turned over in Nina’s stomach. He’d called her that, and she’d forgotten until now. Little Mouse. “Why did you kill her?” She wanted to know. She needed to know why he had murdered her mother. Though no reason on earth could justify what he’d done, she still demanded the reason. “Why?”
She didn’t see a gun, but it could be behind his back. He could be carrying all manner of weapons—just like she had hidden around her condo. Now she just had to make it to the closest one so she could force him to leave...after she got him to admit what he’d done.
It was a shame she couldn’t record his confession.
“I’ll take the first question.” The words rolled from his mouth as sweetly as a frozen treat.
She repeated it. “Why are you here?”
“Curiosity, I must admit. That is the biggest reason.” He halfway grinned. “That my Little Mouse has come back after all these years, scurrying around and trying to dig up information best left buried. For everyone’s
