surprised you’re so…forgiving, Michelle.”
Michelle shrugged. “It’s the opposite. You should be surprised if I weren’t.”
Amanda walked with Michelle to the front door and out of reach of the headlights. Luckily Michelle had turned on her porch light before she’d left, so she could actually put her key in the lock.
Thrusting open the door, she ducked inside and snagged Amanda’s sweater from the chair. She handed it to her friend and gave her a hug. “Call him.”
She watched as Amanda floated down the walkway, the fog sucking her into its embrace. Michelle waited, listening for the slam of the car door and the growl of the engine. Instead she heard…a soft thud. Fog this thick muted noise, but that didn’t sound like a car door.
“Amanda?” Michelle squinted into the white wisps swirling around her. The lights from Amanda’s car created a dull illumination on the sidewalk, but Michelle couldn’t focus on anything beyond that. Maybe Amanda couldn’t wait to get home and decided to call Ryan on her cell phone.
Michelle descended one step, her hand clutching the banister beside her. “Amanda?”
Scuffling sounds broke the eerie silence, causing the hair on the back of Michelle’s neck to quiver. Her clammy hand slipped from the banister. Had Amanda tripped and fallen on the ground?
Clasping her sweater to her chest, Michelle inched down the walkway to the gate Amanda had latched behind her. Across the sidewalk, still parked in the street, Amanda’s Mercedes loomed in the fog.
“Amanda, where are you?” Michelle pushed open the gate and stumbled onto the sidewalk. She walked in front of the car toward the driver’s side, the door still open to the street. As she scuffed her feet along the asphalt, hands held in front of her like a blind person, her toe plowed into something soft and giving on the ground.
Michelle’s heart skittered in her chest as she crouched down next to the inert form. Amanda must’ve fallen and injured herself. The lights from the car’s interior cast a waxy glow on Amanda’s pale cheek. Michelle wedged a hand beneath her friend’s head and turned it toward her.
Amanda’s wide, staring eyes sent a river of chills down Michelle’s spine. Then she became aware of the sticky wetness oozing through her fingers.
As Michelle drew away her hand, Amanda’s head lolled back revealing a dark slash across her neck.
Michelle fell backward, as a high, keening wail pierced the blanket of fog. It wasn’t until she stopped to breathe that she realized the sound was coming from her own mouth.
CHAPTER TWO
THE CRY, LIKE an animal in extreme pain, shot through the fog and pierced his gut. But Colin knew human suffering when he heard it. He was intimately familiar with human suffering.
He dropped the rocks he’d been chucking into the water and lurched toward the sound. After a few seconds’ break, the wail began again and he glommed onto the sound of misery like a homing device. He stumbled from the sand onto the dirt path leading to the road.
Through the veil of white mist, he discerned a car parked on the street, its headlights on and the driver’s-side door open. As he jogged closer, the fog parted to reveal two figures, both on the ground next to the open door. Had there been an accident?
He heaved to a stop, his chest tight, adrenaline pumping through his system. One person lay crumpled on the ground and the other, a woman, leaned back on her arms, her head thrown back, her face twisted with anguish.
He squatted beside the nonresponsive person and jerked back. Someone had slit her throat. He’d seen her face before…at the restaurant.
He scrambled toward the other woman, Michelle Girard, and grabbed her shoulders. “What happened? Who did this?”
Her wide, glassy eyes skimmed his face as she dragged in another breath. He shook her to dispel the shock, and the oncoming scream gurgled in her throat.
Then her gaze darted back and forth and she clutched his shirt, popping off two buttons with the strength of her grip. “He’s here.”
She scrambled to her feet, dragging him with her. Her body shook convulsively and her knees gave way. Before she could fall to the ground, Colin wrapped his arms around her and pulled her away from the body of her friend.
“Did you see him?”
Her head whipped around, dislodging the droplets of moisture clinging to her hair and showering his face. “No. He must still be here. I didn’t hear a car. I didn’t see anything.”
Colin reached between their bodies and unzipped his gun bag, hanging around his waist. He withdrew his weapon and pulled Michelle toward the house with the white picket fence. “This is your house, right?”
She glanced at his Glock, and a tremble rolled through her slim frame.
“I’m Colin Roarke.” He rubbed a circle on her stiff back. “Do you remember me from the restaurant a few hours ago?”
She nodded, and he propelled her toward the front door. He halted on the porch. “Did you leave your door open?”
Again she nodded, and Colin pushed over the threshold, clutching his gun. Michelle clung to his arm with her blood-stained hands as he checked the other rooms in the small house.
He grabbed her phone and called 9-1-1, and then tried to get Michelle to sit down. Shivers racked her body, and Colin knew if he released her she’d plunge to the floor.
Finally she bent her knees and perched on the edge of her couch. “It just happened. She was leaving my house. I heard noises, but I couldn’t see anything. Oh, my God, he murdered her right in front of me and I didn’t see a thing.”
As she buried her face in her hands, Colin put his arm around her heaving shoulders. She’d been lucky the killer hadn’t come after her. His muscles ached with tension. He wanted to run out there and find the SOB who had done this, but he couldn’t leave Michelle.
He wouldn’t leave her like he did that time when she was a kid.
Sirens blared through the night and they both jumped. Michelle jerked her head up, a shaky hand covering her mouth. “I hope Ryan’s not working tonight. He can’t see Amanda like that.”
Colin pushed off the sofa and headed for the door. Michelle trailed after him. “You can wait inside, Michelle. Someone will come in to question you.”
She twisted her hands, still smudged with traces of her friend’s blood. “I can’t stay inside, especially if Ryan’s out there.”
Colin dragged the collar of Michelle’s sweater up to her pale face. “You don’t need to see Amanda again. Stay in the yard.”
He stepped onto the porch, tucking Michelle behind him. Three police cars and an ambulance squealed to a stop in the street. Must’ve emptied out the entire P.D. of Coral Cove. Did they even have a homicide detective? Colin strode forward, holding his FBI badge in front of him as the red-and-blue lights filtered through the
