the interstate and negotiated her Lincoln Town Car through a series of turns. Mia’s apartment complex was ahead on the right. Red and blue lights strobed through trees still bare from winter.
As she moved closer, the muscles drew tight across her shoulders. Two Seattle police cruisers and a crime-scene unit sat in front of the building that housed Mia’s apartment.
Her sister’s words echoed in her thoughts, fragments of a conversation they’d had after the funeral. Mia had said there was something going on at the club where she worked, that if she stumbled across exactly what it was, her life would be in danger. Shelby hadn’t taken her seriously at the time.
She still didn’t. Mia was the ultimate drama queen, the proverbial “girl who cried wolf.” Anything for attention. She’d been crafting fantastic stories since she was old enough to talk.
Shelby stopped in a visitor parking space and killed the engine. When she reached for the door handle, the lights strobing in her side mirror sent tension through her again.
She tried to shake it off. This was a three-story apartment complex. There were more than thirty units in Mia’s building alone. The probability that the police vehicles had anything to do with Mia or little Chloe was low.
She stepped into the chilly March air as a Toyota Prius approached. When it passed, her gaze locked onto the back and stuck. Large black letters stretched across the white rear bumper—Medical Examiner. Parked three spaces down was a white van with the same designation.
Her breath hitched and something dark settled over her. The presence of the medical examiner meant one thing.
Someone was dead.
While the Prius parked, she sprinted toward the building, heart pounding in her chest. It couldn’t be Mia. What her sister had said at Aunt Bea’s funeral was an attention-getting ploy, just like all the other times. Having grown up with Mia, Shelby had her number. Letting the tales get to her was never a good idea.
She bypassed the elevator and ran up the steps, taking them two at a time. She’d never been to her sister’s apartment, but Mia had given her the number—312.
When Shelby burst into the third-floor hallway, a vise clamped down on her chest. Two apartments away, the door was ajar. A woman stood in front of the opening, soothing a crying child in her arms. Tears had left streaks in the woman’s makeup. She wasn’t familiar. The child was.
Where was Mia? Why was Chloe being held by a crying stranger?
Shelby rushed forward, then skidded to a stop. The gold numbers affixed to the metal door put to death the irrational hope that the apartment belonged to someone else. The woman shifted Chloe to her other hip, and Shelby peered around her.
Beyond the entry, a crime-scene tech was kneeling with her back to the door. Next to her, a red smear marked the beige tiles.
Shelby’s stomach did a free fall, and her knees threatened to buckle. Maybe that wasn’t Mia’s blood on the floor. A friend lived with her and helped care for Chloe. Addy, if she remembered correctly.
She shifted her gaze to the woman and spoke over the little girl’s cries. “I’m Shelby, Mia’s sister. What’s going on?”
The woman’s gaze met hers. “It’s Mia.”
“What’s Mia? What happened?”
“She’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
The woman squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “Gone.”
Shelby’s mind spun, searching all the possible interpretations of “gone.” Mia could be gone on an errand. But that wouldn’t explain the woman’s tears. Maybe Mia had decided she couldn’t cope with the pressures of motherhood and disappeared, deserting her little girl.
That was the explanation Shelby clung to, because the most obvious one was unthinkable. Her twenty-one-year-old sister couldn’t be dead.
“I went to the store.” The woman’s tone was flat. “I took Chloe with me, so Mia could take a nap. When I got back, Mia was...” A shudder shook her shoulders. “She was on the floor in front of the couch. Someone had slit her throat.”
“Is she...?” The final word wouldn’t come out.
At the woman’s nod, Shelby collapsed against the doorjamb and sank to the floor. Mia was dead. Shelby had finally decided to mend their relationship, but it was too late.
And Chloe was orphaned. Her playboy daddy wouldn’t step up. Based on what Mia had said after the funeral, the guy was worthless.
So it all fell on Shelby. The realization knocked the last of the wind from her.
She was no stranger to responsibility. Through her adolescent and teen years, she’d pretty much raised Mia. They hadn’t been orphans, at least not in the traditional sense. But with a father who worked long hours, an older sister who took off the moment she became an adult and a mother who had years earlier retreated to her room and withdrawn from life, managing the Adair household became Shelby’s responsibility.
At eighteen, she’d traded one mantle for another, taking care of Aunt Bea through grueling rounds of chemo and radiation while keeping the diner afloat. At twenty-five, she’d done it again when the cancer returned. That stint had lasted two years, ending with her aunt’s death two weeks ago.
But this was different. She had no clue how to raise a child. The way Mia had turned out was proof.
She pushed herself to her feet and straightened her shoulders. She hadn’t known how to run a diner, either, but she’d figured it out.
She held out her hands, palms up. “Come to Aunt Shelby, sweetie.”
Chloe wrapped her arms more tightly around the woman’s neck. When Shelby tried to take her, the child released an ear-piercing wail.
“She’s not used to you.” The woman’s tone seemed to hold a note of accusation. Or maybe that was Shelby’s own guilt.
“I’ve been...” What, busy? Too busy to be a part of her niece’s life when she lived forty-five minutes away?
The woman rubbed Chloe’s back in slow circles, whispering soothing words. The screams quieted to gut-wrenching sobs.
Shelby crossed her arms. “Are you Chloe’s babysitter?”
“Nanny.” She extended her right hand. “Addy Sorenson.”
Shelby shook the woman’s hand. Addy wasn’t what she’d pictured. Nannies didn’t normally wear skin-hugging jeans and sweaters with plunging necklines. Add the brilliant blue eyes and the thick mane of hair flowing down her back like black silk, and she couldn’t be further from the stereotypical image of a nanny.
Of course, Mia hadn’t gotten her from a nanny-for-hire ad. Right after Chloe was born, Shelby had visited Mia in the hospital. Mia had planned to go back to her bartender job at the club and had arranged child care—a former coworker named Addy. She’d had a hysterectomy and never returned to work. Apparently, the woman loved children so much she agreed to provide full-time care for little more than room and board. So Mia
