apartment was usually dark. Avery threw her keys on the table and shed the rest of her belongings: gun, shoulder harness, walkie-talkie, badge, belt, phone, and wallet. She undressed on the way to the shower.
After a long soak to process the events of the day, she put on a robe, grabbed a beer from the fridge, then her phone, and headed out to the terrace.
Nearly twenty missed calls flashed on her cell, along with ten new messages. Most of them were from Connelly and O’Malley. There was a lot of screaming.
Sometimes Avery was so single-minded and driven she refused to pick up for anyone that wasn’t essential to her task, especially when all of the pieces hadn’t been put together; today was one of those days.
She scrolled down through last numbers dialed – and all the people that had called her in the past month. Not a single one was her daughter, or her ex-husband.
Suddenly, she missed them both.
Numbers were dialed.
The phone rang.
A message answered: “Hi, this is Rose. I’m not here right now to take your call, but if you leave a brief message, and your name and number, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks so much.” Beep.
Avery hung up.
She toyed with the idea of calling Jack, her ex. He was a good man, her college sweetheart with a heart of gold: a truly decent person. They’d had a torrid affair when she was eighteen, and she, with a sickening ego after her dream job, had ruined everything.
For years, she blamed other people about the split, and for the rift with her daughter: Howard Randall for his lies, her old boss, the money, the power, and all those people she had to constantly entertain and beguile to stay one step ahead of the truth: Little by little, her clients had become less reliable, and still she wanted to keep going, to ignore the truth, to bend justice one way or the other – simply to win. Only one more case, she often told herself. Next time, I’ll defend someone truly innocent and set the record straight.
Howard Randall had been that case.
I’m innocent, he’d cried at their first meeting. These students are my life. Why would I hurt one of them?
Avery had believed him, and for the first time in a long time, she had begun to believe in herself. Randall was a world-renowned psychology professor at Harvard, in his sixties, with no motive and no known history of his unhinged personal beliefs. More than that, he appeared weak and broken, and Avery had always wanted to defend the weak.
When she got him off, it was the highlight of her career, the highest of heights – that is, until he purposely killed again to expose her as a fraud.
All Avery had wanted to know was: why?
Why would you it? she’d asked him once in his cell. Why would you lie and set me up, just to go to prison for the rest of your life?
Because I knew you could be saved, Howard had replied.
Saved, Avery thought.
Is this salvation? she wondered and viewed her surroundings. Here? Now? No friends? No family? A beer in hand and a new life hunting down killers to make amends for my past? She took a swig of her drink and shook her head. No, this isn’t salvation. At least not yet.
Her thoughts turned to the killer.
A picture of him had begun to form in her mind: quiet, lonely, desperate for attention, a specialist with herbs and corpses. She ruled out an alcoholic or drug addict. He was too careful. The minivan harked to a family, but his actions seemed to indicate a family was what he wanted, not what he had.
Her mind swirling with thoughts and images, Avery downed two more beers before she suddenly fell asleep in her cozy outdoor chair.
CHAPTER NINE
In her dreams, Avery was with her family again.
Her ex was an athletic man with cropped brown hair and dazzling green eyes. Avid climbers, they were on a hike together with their daughter, Rose; she was only sixteen and had already received an early admission to Brandeis College, even though she was only a junior in high school, but in the dream she was six. They were all singing and walking along a path surrounded by dense trees. Dark birds fluttered and cried out before the trees morphed into a shadowy monster and a knife-like hand stabbed Rose in the chest.
“No!” Avery screamed.
Another hand stabbed Jack and both he and her daughter were hoisted away.
“No! No! No!” Avery cried.
The monster lowered.
Dark lips whispered in her ear.
There is no justice.
Avery jolted awake to the sound of incessant ringing. She was still on the terrace in her robe. The sun had already come up. Her phone continued to blare.
She picked up.
“Black.”
“Yo Black!” Ramirez answered. “Don’t you ever pick up? I’m downstairs. Get your shit together and get out here. I’ve got coffee and sketch samples.”
“What time is it?”
“Eight-thirty.”
“Give me five minutes,” she said and hung up.
The dream continued to permeate her thoughts. Sluggishly, Avery rose and headed into the apartment. Her head pounded. Faded blue jeans were tugged on. A white T-shirt was made respectable by a black blazer. Three chugs of orange juice and a downed granola bar was breakfast. On the way out, Avery glanced at herself in the mirror. Her attire, and her morning meal, were a far cry from thousand-dollar suits and daily breakfast at the finest restaurants. Get over it, she thought. You’re not here to look pretty. You’re here to bring in the bad guys.
Ramirez handed her a cup of coffee in the car.
“Looking good, Black,” he joked.
As always, he appeared to be the model of perfection: dark blue jeans, a light-blue button-down shirt, and a dark-blue jacket with light-brown belt and shoes.
“You should be a model,” Avery grumbled, “not a cop.”
A smile displayed his perfect teeth.
“Actually, I did do a little modeling once.”
He pulled out of the breezeway and headed north.
“You get any sleep last night?” he asked.
“Not much. How about you?”
‘“I slept like a baby,” he said proudly. “I always sleep well. None of this gets to me, you know? I like to let it ride,” he said and waved his hand through the air.
“Any updates?”
“Both boys were home last night. Connelly put a watch on them just to make sure they didn’t bolt. He also talked to the dean to get some information and make sure no one freaks
