The message was short, just three words—a lit match that burned out just as quick.

“It wasn’t suicide.”

The voice pressed into all the spaces in the kitchen. It was high and thin, the vowels cutting short.

Mia closed her eyes and hit the play button again. “It wasn’t suicide.” The words crawled along her skin, sticking to the sweat slicked into the grooves of her palms, slipping into her nostrils as they flared with her uneven breathing.

She hit play again. And then again.

Each time, that quick flame, then gone, replaced with silence.

After the initial rush, as her pulse settled, she listened to the voice, the way the message was thrown out, careless and easy, like it didn’t really matter. There was no fear threaded through it, no urgency beyond a quick note to himself.

“Is he . . . ? Is he talking about himself, do you think?” Izzy asked, when Mia’s finger hovered over the play icon once more.

“It wasn’t suicide.”

The message so closely echoed her thoughts it made her light-headed. But . . .

“I don’t think so. Not about himself. Listen.” Mia watched Izzy’s face as the voice once more tumbled out of the little speaker. Izzy tugged at her pursed bottom lip, but the rest of her was held taut, her eyes unfocused beyond Mia’s shoulder.

“He’s calm,” Izzy finally said, her gaze returning to Mia’s. “Doesn’t sound like he was under duress.”

“Probably not,” Mia agreed. So why was the message left on the phone? Why was the device unlocked in the first place? “I wonder if he erased the rest.”

Izzy dropped her hand and ran her palm along her jeans. “That would be odd, don’t you think?”

“Yeah. Why would he get rid of all his notes in the middle of his investigation?” It would be odd. To do all that work. Interviews, thoughts, impressions. All gone. “Or maybe he wasn’t the one who deleted them.”

“The killer then?” Izzy shifted so she was leaning back against the counter. Mia didn’t move from where she hovered above the phone, her irrational side nervous that they would be locked out if she took one wrong step. “If he was murdered, that is.”

It wasn’t suicide. Mia almost repeated the words out loud, but she wanted to hold on to doubt a little longer.

“I don’t think a potential killer would have done it,” she said. Why would they leave a message like that on the phone yet delete the rest of the voice memos? There was no other indication that the person was trying to get caught. “Maybe Twist was getting scared. He deleted the more incriminating recordings in case the killer found the phone and checked it.”

Izzy ran a hand through her hair. “That was a risk. By deleting the rest of them, he put a spotlight on that one.”