style="font-size:15px;"> Alicia? The glossy auburn hair splayed around her head matched the publicity photos that had been sent over to the station, but the facial features were too puffy to be identified. The giveaway was the man with what appeared to be the murder weapon in his hand—Alicia’s boyfriend, Minnesota Golden Gophers’ bad boy, Damon Lange. The college basketball player’s famous temper had finally turned him into a killer.
Hallie’s gaze locked with his. Ice encased her muscles, and her heart slammed against her rib cage. A change melted over Lange’s face. Pinched sorrow fell away, relaxed into openmouthed awareness, and then red-faced fear—and fury. Lange raised the fist that held the cord and charged toward Hallie.
She shrieked and whirled away, racing toward the open door. The scatter rug on the floor slid beneath her heels. Hallie’s cameraman, Stan Fisher, stepped into the house, exclaiming, as Lange’s body struck Hallie from behind. She careened into the cameraman, and the two of them went down in a heap at the foot of the stairs. Hallie’s knees hit the floor—hard—and her suit pants did little to protect them. Pain speared up her legs. Damon disappeared out the door. His boat-sized feet struck a hollow tattoo on the porch.
Gasping for air, Hallie rolled away from Stan, who lay on his back spluttering and clutching his precious camera to his bony chest. Heedless of her aching knees, she scrambled on all fours toward the doorway and gripped the doorpost. Out on the sun-soaked street, Damon charged into the street, arms pumping, the braided cord no longer in hand. A green-and-blue Papa Morelli’s Pizza delivery car whizzed up the road, and the ball player dodged barely in time to avoid being hit. Then he raced onward and out of view between the houses.
“What was that all about?” Stan’s footfalls came up behind her.
Dazed, Hallie stared up into his wide-eyed face. “Call 9-1-1. Damon killed Alicia. I saw.” Her voice came out in a rasp. She struggled to her feet, leg muscles jittering. “At least, I think she’s dead. I’d better…I need to check.” She forced a lump down her throat.
Stan gaped at her, freckles standing out like punctuation marks on his pale cheeks.
“Just call.” Her voice rose an octave.
She brushed past him and wobbled into the living room. Debris crunched under her pumps as she approached the body. To one side lay the cord she’d seen in Damon’s hand. He must have dropped it when he fled. In the background, Stan’s excited voice reported the emergency.
Gaze averted from Alicia’s face, Hallie watched the body’s chest for some sign of rising and falling, but she spotted no movement beneath the gauzy, long-sleeved tunic top swirled in psychedelic 1970s colors. She crouched beside Alicia and pressed two fingers to the inside of her wrist. She held her breath while she counted to ten. Not a flicker of life.
Groaning, Hallie closed her eyes and bowed her head. Not again, Lord. Why did women stay with men who abused them? She’d asked that unanswerable question over and over in the nine years since Teresa’s senseless death. Back then, as a college sophomore, she had been powerless to gain justice, but this time she was in prime position to make certain the guilty party didn’t get away with murder just because he was a popular athlete.
Jaw clenched, Hallie opened her eyes, and her gaze fell on the edge of a band of metal on Alicia’s wrist that she’d nudged aside in order to feel for a pulse. The etching on the band looked familiar. Hallie pulled the featherweight shirtsleeve away from the inch-wide bracelet and took a closer look. Every muscle went rigid.
She knew the unique markings on that brass and copper armband. The Nigerian artisan had been dead for over two decades, since Hallie was eight years old. But the woman had never in her life sold her work commercially—only given it to people she regarded as special.
Why was Alicia Drayton wearing a bracelet fashioned by Hallie’s mother?
Hallie sucked in a deep breath, and then let the air seep from her lungs. Her hand dug for the camera phone in her purse’s outside pocket. This was going to be the most distasteful thing she’d ever done in her life. But she couldn’t step away without a clear record of her mother’s work, and she couldn’t make off with the bracelet. Blanking her mind and moving quickly, she snapped several shots of the dead woman’s arm.
“The cops and the paramedics are on their way.” Stan’s voice came from the doorway.
She glanced over her shoulder and spotted an eight-by-ten photograph lying face-up on the floor. The glass inside the cherry-wood frame was cracked in a crazy pattern that suggested someone had stepped on it, but she could still make out a man’s smiling face. No taller than average, with hair touched by gray and a middle displaying a small paunch, his confident presence overshadowed the women in the photo. He stood between them with an arm around each of their shoulders.
One of them could only be Alicia, just a few years younger. Her full lips pouted beneath a bored green gaze. Typical teenager. The other woman, Alicia’s decades older mirror image, stood stiffly and a bit glassy-eyes, as if the camera made her nervous. The man—Alicia’s father?—grinned like he’d won the lottery. And why not? His wife was stunning and his daughter even more so. Correction. The daughter had been stunning. These parents now had horrible news coming to them. A whimper squeaked out Hallie’s tight throat.
Nausea squeezing her stomach, she stood and picked her way toward Stan. How could he hover there, calmly panning his video camera over the room?
“Remind me,” she said as she brushed past him into the foyer, “never, ever to volunteer for the police beat.”
“You couldn’t guess in a million years the trouble Hallie walked into this afternoon.”
The tense words brought Brody Jordan’s head around from the sports highlights he was editing in the video room. Vince Graham, the crime reporter, stood in the doorway, craggy face drawn into those taut planes that made his mug so compelling on the air. Brody clicked off the video and waved Vince in.
The crime reporter shook his head. “No time for a chat. Stan called the story in, and I’m headed for Alicia Drayton’s house. The woman’s been beaten and strangled, and Hallie caught Damon Lange in the act.”
Brody stiffened, nostrils flaring. “I don’t believe it.”
Vince frowned. “Hallie’s not given to hallucinations, Jordan. The cops and the medical examiner are already on the scene, and they’re taking the whole thing very seriously.”
“No, I didn’t mean Hallie imagined a murder, but there’s no way Damon hurt Alicia.”
The ends of the crime reporter’s mouth twisted upward. “Enjoy your illusions, buddy. One thing I’ve learned on this beat is anyone’s capable of anything.”
“Have they got Damon in custody?”
“Naw. He skedaddled. There’s an APB out on him.”
“I’m coming with you.” Brody rose.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
Brody narrowed his eyes at his smirking coworker.
“The six o’clock news broadcast? You can’t be in two places at once.”
Brody checked his watch. “It’s later than I thought. This is one time in a million
