had been killed a year ago. Home invasion. Burglary gone out of control, the police had decided.
Murdered. Their blood on the floor, the walls.
The police had never caught the killer. Or killers.
Molly tugged once more at the neck of her sweatshirt. Air. She needed air. Running to the door to the porch gallery, she flung it open and stood shivering in the morning air, gasping.
The rain had become a silvery drizzle in the gray light, the soundless shapes down at the bayou emerging from the mist and disappearing back into it. The murky coil of water drifted by them.
Even chilled, she found the wet air hard to breathe, and she couldn’t stand the rasping sounds she made. Weakness to let Detective John Harlan see her fear.
When he closed his palm over her shoulder, she jumped.
“Might be a virus after all,” he murmured as her breath rattled in her throat. He raised his eyebrow, an elegant arch of black against his night-pale skin.
His grasp of her shoulder seemed heavy, but she knew the force was all in her own mind, not in the actual weight of his fingers curving over her. “Maybe you’re right,” she whispered, the air cool and damp against her face. Her pulse pitter-patted at the base of her throat. “Maybe I am coming down with a cold.”
“Or something. But we’ll see, won’t we?”
She nodded.
He slanted his head toward the bayou. “In the meantime, to help you stay healthy, shoes?” His words once again seemed to carry another message, but Molly couldn’t decipher it or his slow, appraising glance, which began at her feet, moved leisurely over her and ended at her fingers clenched in the neckline of her shirt.
“All right.” Molly looked at the sinuous bayou. Down there. Someone had been murdered during the night.
“I think you might even know the victim.” He turned her back into the kitchen with almost no effort.
“What?” Her knees gave way and she lurched against him before she regained her balance. She couldn’t have resisted the strength in those thin fingers if she’d had to. She felt the implied power and yielded. “All right. I don’t think I’ll be able to help you, though. I’m sure I don’t know her,” she said through stiff lips.
“Won’t know if we don’t go look, will we?” He scratched the center of his broad back against the wall and watched as she pulled on her sneakers and tied them. “Ready?” And there he was, his hand clamped around her elbow. Despite his impression of lazy strength, he moved too fast for her.
Pulling free, she stopped. “Why do I have to identify whoever that is?” Wildly she pointed to the bayou but didn’t, couldn’t, look again in the direction of the sullen water drifting past her property. “Was?”
“You don’t have to.” His hand returned firmly to her elbow. “It will probably be unpleasant.” He walked her to the gallery. “I’m sure you want to cooperate with us, don’t you, Ms. Harris?” Silky smooth with warning, his voice vibrated through her. “There’s no reason not to help us unless you have something to hide. You don’t, do you, Ms. Harris? Have anything to hide?”
He’d moved her to the stairs leading from the gallery to the lawn and onto the grass before she could speak. Raindrops splatted her face as she looked at his fingers gripping her arm.
“Of course not.” Glancing at him, she said, “And I don’t need your help walking across my own yard. You can turn me loose.” She shot him a glance filled with all the frustrated anger and fear and hostility boiling in her. “Unless you’re arresting me?” Saying the words out loud diminished her fear and gave her strength. She shrugged herself out of his grasp, surprised by the ease with which she freed herself.
“Arresting you? Now why would you think I’d arrest you, Ms. Harris?” The amusement glinting in his golden brown eyes disabused her of the notion that she’d had anything to do with the fact that she was now walking unaided down the sloping, rough terrain leading to the bayou.
Detective Harlan was playing games with her. Watching her reactions, he was enjoying toying with her.
But then he had nothing to lose.
She did.
Her freedom.
Her sanity.
“As I said, why would you think I’m arresting you?” His voice intruded on her chaotic thoughts.
Letting her antagonism snake between them, Molly slipped her cold hands into her jeans pockets. “Doesn’t it make sense that I would think you were trying to see if I had stabbed that woman, whoever she is?”
“Ah, well, Ms. Harris, I don’t remember saying she’d been stabbed.” Though his heavy eyebrows drew together in puzzlement, his voice mocked her.
“You told the other detectives to pick up my knife for evidence. I assumed—”
“Assumptions are dangerous, Ms. Harris. Especially where murder’s concerned. I’m a cop. I don’t assume anything. I just, well, I just look at what I find. Evidence. You know.” He was so close to her that his thigh brushed against hers, a solid flex of muscle.
Avoiding him, Molly stepped sideways. She couldn’t look at the black plastic bag on the ground at the water’s edge. She’d seen the body bag in that quick glance through her living-room window and hadn’t been able to look at it since then. She lengthened her stride, trying to put distance between herself and Detective Harlan. With his air of casual menace, he made her uneasy, made her skin itchy. “I knew because you told the other detectives to collect the knife,” she insisted dully.
“Of course I did. Such an interesting place to find a knife, wouldn’t you agree?” His long legs kept effortless pace with her shorter, hurried strides. His warm hand on the inside of her arm stopped her before she could break into a run. “Are you a murderer, Ms. Harris?” he asked politely, his low voice skimming over her skin, frightening in its indifference.
Molly saw the dead woman’s face framed by the partially zippered plastic bag. She swayed, his hands slid to her waist, and with John Harlan’s imprisoning arms around her, Molly felt the world go cold and dark.
She came to sitting on the wet grass, Harlan’s hand pressing her head between her knees. Nothing had changed.
Everything had changed.
“Ah, you did know her then?” His fingers were firm around the column of her neck.
“Yes.” Letting her head rest on her knee, Molly wiped the tears, the rain, whatever, away from her face. “She was my friend. My maid. Had been my maid for two years. I fired her three months ago.” She pressed her face against the frayed denim at her knees, drying the hot tears burning her eyes, her mouth, her soul.
“I see.” He hunkered at her side, the fabric of his slacks tight against his muscular thighs.
“No! You don’t!” With Camina lying on the ground in front of her, her frizzy blond hair splashed against the black plastic, Molly was suddenly filled with explosive rage. Using John Harlan’s arm, she pulled herself upright, and he rose with
