“I should have killed you then, you little bitch,” she said. “I should have killed you then!”

“Barbara.” Again, a man’s voice. I fought not to slip back into the past, where another part of my psyche was huddled, mute with terror, in that dryer.

But this was a different voice. A familiar one.

“Barbara, put down the gun.”

I struggled.

Barbara pulled the trigger.

A click. A roar.

The two sounds intermingled.

I waited to swallow a bullet. To die the way my mother probably had, full of a frenzied desire to live, strangling on her own blood.

Barbara toppled to one side.

I lay still, gasping.

I could be alive. I could be dead.

I wasn’t sure which.

Joseph loomed over me. “Are you all right?”

I couldn’t speak.

He retrieved Barbara’s gun, tossed it away. Crouched to check her pulse.

“Mojo,” Joseph said. “Say something.”

“Is—is she dead?”

“Yes,” he answered. “Are you hurt?”

I ran a mental scan. The results were encouraging. “I don’t think so,” I said. “Did I just hear a siren?”

“No,” he answered.

I sat up. I was instantly dizzy, and rested my forehead on my knees, struggling to stay conscious.

“Barbara Larimer killed my parents.” That weird, disjointed sensation came over me again. I wondered if there had been physical evidence to link her to the crime. Maybe, in some dusty box, forgotten in some evidence room, there were fibers, or hair samples. Back in 1983, forensic science as we know it was pretty new, and DNA analysis was considered speculative, and therefore inadmissible in court.

I heard a crackling sound, realized it was a radio. “Backup,” Joseph said.

“Roger that,” someone replied. “We’re rolling.”

“Are you going to shoot me?”

“I’d love to,” Joseph replied, “but I can’t think of an excuse right now. Being stupid and impulsive, alas, does not constitute just cause.” He flipped open a wallet, and a federal-looking badge gleamed golden in the moonlight. “DEA,” he said.

My mouth dropped open. “Drug Enforcement?”

“Yeah. We’ve been after the senator for years. You damn near blew about a decade of hard work tonight.”

I stared at him. “You’ve been investigating Clive? But it was Barbara who—”