struggle – chairs had been knocked over and the kitchen table had been shoved at an odd angle.
A cluster of men and women in white forensic suits stood over something on the floor. Harper recognized the chief coroner’s distinctive short, prematurely gray hair. She was studying something through a magnifying device and talking quietly to Detective Blazer, who crouched beside her, looking where she indicated, a notepad in one hand.
It was only when the coroner straightened to reach for another tool that Harper saw the body.
Her heart stopped beating.
It was her mother’s body.
The woman was naked, lying face down on the tile floor in a dark, viscous pool of blood. Against her paper-white skin, the wounds on her back and arms seemed lurid. Harper counted three stab wounds but, with all that blood, she knew there would be more on the other side.
One pale hand was flung out defensively to the side, delicate fingers reaching for something they would never touch. Her nails were painted pale pink.
Harper couldn’t tear her eyes away. She knew how cold that skin would feel if she touched it.
The woman’s wavy hair had been soaked in blood, making it hard to determine the color. It looked like red with streaks of gold.
The same as her mother’s hair.
Harper heard herself make a whimpering noise deep in her throat.
Instantly, the policeman on the other side of the window shifted. Shuffling his feet, he began to turn around.
Panicking, Harper yanked back, flattening herself against the wall next to the window.
Her ribs closed around her lungs.
She closed her eyes against the blinding sun, and images of that day so long ago flooded back. Sliding in the blood. Hands ice-cold and slippery.
Mom? Mommy?
It felt like her chest was going to explode. She had to breathe. She had to get out of here.
Blindly, she stumbled across the back garden, her feet clumsy where earlier they’d been so swift. She was certain everyone on the block could hear her hammering heart. Her choking breaths.
When she reached the back fence she didn’t even slow down. Using her forward velocity to propel her, she leaped up, grabbing the bar at the top and vaulting over. The sharp points of metal were blades digging into the palms of her hands and she let go too early, landing badly in the pretty backyard on the other side. Her ankle twisted with a worrying crunch, sending her sprawling into the petunias.
For a moment, she lay there amid the colorful blooms, clutching her leg and breathing in sobbing gasps.
That body. That hand, reaching out.
This was no coincidence. That murder scene looked exactly like her mother’s murder in every way.
How was that possible?
When Harper limped back to the crime tape a few minutes later, the news crews were leaning against their vans, drinking coffee from cardboard cups.
Spotting her, Natalie’s eyebrows shot up. ‘What the hell happened to you?’
Harper had brushed as much of the dirt from her clothes as she could, but her ankle had begun to swell. She was hot and sweaty, her clothes clung to her back.
‘I tripped on a broken curb. Twisted my ankle.’ She made a vague gesture that she hoped said would-you-believe-it-what-a-day, and limped over to where Miles stood some distance away, watching this exchange without expression.
‘I assume that went as well as could be expected.’ His tone was dry.
‘It went fine,’ she said shortly. ‘How about at this end?’
He gave a one-shoulder shrug.
‘The TV crews are now very exercised about the lack of information.’ He gestured at her disheveled appearance. ‘What the hell happened back there? You look like you walked through a snake’s nest.’
‘I fell,’ she said, ‘coming back over the fence. That’s all.’
He stepped closer to her.
‘You got in the crime scene?’ His voice was barely above a whisper.
‘I got a look,’ she said. ‘I didn’t go in.’
He looked at her with reluctant curiosity.
‘What’d you see in there?’
In her mind Harper saw the pale body. The spreading pool of deep red. Her mother’s kitchen.
But she made herself think like a reporter.
‘The victim’s in the kitchen,’ she said evenly. ‘Looks like it’s the mother, as we thought. Seems to be only one victim – the coroner and Blazer were both in the room with her. The forensics unit is examining the body now.’
Miles knew her well enough to know she wasn’t telling him everything.
But when he spoke, all he said was, ‘She shot?’
‘Stabbed. Repeatedly.’
A flare of interest in his eyes.
‘Stabbing’s a personal crime,’ he mused, rubbing his jaw. ‘Crime of passion. They’ll be looking at the husband.’
‘I don’t think there is one.’
‘An ex-husband then. Or a boyfriend.’ He met her eyes. ‘You said this scene reminded you of another crime. Is it the same?’
Harper had promised him an explanation but now wasn’t the time to get into everything.
‘Looks a lot like it,’ she said. ‘Before I can be sure, though, I need to do some research.’ She paused. ‘The other crime … It’s an old one, Miles.’
‘How old?’
‘Fifteen years.’
His eyes left hers, sweeping down to the house in the distance.
‘Now why,’ he wondered aloud, ‘would someone kill and then not kill again for fifteen years?’
Harper didn’t reply. But it was a good question.
Why would her mother’s killer be back now? Where had he been for all these years?
Police had investigated her murder for months. Harper’s family had protected her as much as they could from what was happening but she’d known.
The
