She looked away, feeling uncomfortably exposed.

She couldn’t imagine what her other friends and fellow grad students were thinking at UAF.

Grief, obviously, the way she felt grief for the loss of a good friend.

Relief perhaps, that they’d had a lucky escape? That they’d known she was off her rocker since she’d returned to the Institute last summer and could have attacked any one of them?

The thought of being responsible for Martin’s death was unbearable, and she wanted to curl into a ball and howl. She hadn’t been able to look any of them in the eye when she’d been driven past them in the back of the police car. Her advisor, Professor Jim Nilsson, was pretentious and image conscious at the best of times. This would give him a cardiac arrest. She shied away from thinking about what it meant for her Ph.D.

She wasn’t sure she could handle the destruction of her dreams. Not on top of everything else.

Eban and Quentin had both told her not to say a thing to the cops until her lawyer arrived. She’d assumed, as they were law enforcement, they’d have told her to simply tell the truth. She was a little shocked at their vehement insistence on complete silence and knew she’d already fudged that up.

Her resolve had begun to crumble under pressure. Detective Torgerson had been questioning her steadily, almost kindly, for a couple of hours. She’d seemed nice at first. Straightforward. Honest. Exactly the kind of person Darby prided herself on being. Then the woman had begun to get pushy and insistent. Darby had started to feel as if she was wasting her time and being difficult by not confessing everything, even though she had no clear memory of events.

She knew the detective was only doing her job. Darby wanted to be helpful—it was in her nature to be helpful. But what if the truth was that she had killed Martin in cold blood? How could she ever recover from that? How could she live with herself?

Her friends would be devastated. Eban…

“I’d like to speak to my client alone, please.” The lawyer addressed the police officer by the door, jerking Darby out of her spiraling anxiety.

The cop nodded and turned to leave.

“Make sure any recording equipment is turned off, if you don’t mind, Officer. And that no one is in the observation room until we’re done.”

“You’ll have complete privacy.” The man looked irritated by the list of instructions. “Call if you need any help. I’ll be right outside the door.”

Help?

Darby blinked. What kind of help? Did the policeman think she was dangerous and might overpower the attorney who was a foot taller and probably seventy pounds heavier? She visualized the knife in Martin’s chest and her stomach turned. Maybe he was right.

“Miss O’Roarke?”

She snapped to attention.

The lawyer was tall, broad shouldered and the sort of good-looking that wore the king’s crown at homecoming every year.