She straightened her spine and took a deep steadying breath, trying to recall what she’d eaten for breakfast yesterday morning, which now seemed like a lifetime ago.

Granola? Probably. Along with some green tea. She was a creature of habit.

He wrote it down and she stared at his neat handwriting. His precise and elegant cursive.

She hoped Elliot Byrne was as brilliant as the confident persona he exuded. She hoped she hadn’t murdered poor Martin. And, she hoped, despite everything, that Eban hadn’t totally lost faith in her. If he did, then she’d truly be lost.

* * *

Eban followed the detective’s unmarked car along highways edged with deep-green conifers, which lined the road like dark sentinels all the way to the crime scene. The snow was glaringly bright despite the overcast nature of the day. The sky, a burgeoning, ominous gray that promised more flurries in the near future. Wind sliced across the road with razor-sharp teeth, taking a barrage of ice crystals with it.

The roads were encrusted with compacted snow but were thankfully well gritted. He’d grown up in Montana where snowfall was measured in feet rather than inches, so he wasn’t intimidated by the conditions. The four-wheel drive and winter tires of the rented SUV helped. He wasn’t looking forward to the minus thirty windchill forecast for later tonight though.

Darby loved it here despite the extreme winters…

Twenty minutes west of downtown, the detective flipped on her blinker and pulled off the main highway into a sparsely populated area. A little farther and they came to a police cruiser on the side berm. The detective lowered the window and exchanged a few words with the officer guarding the scene.

Eban wasn’t sure what to expect from this scene.

It was definitely a homicide, he knew that at least. The victim had been found on his back with a knife in his chest, so it was unlikely he’d died of natural causes or in a freak accident.

Eban forced himself not to run what-if scenarios through his mind and instead discover what the evidence told them—with the insider knowledge that Darby would never act violently toward anyone without extreme provocation.

Torgerson pulled forward and parked in front of the cruiser. Eban reversed and tucked his rental behind the police car and grabbed his raid jacket before opening the door. It wasn’t much in terms of warmth, but it kept out the worst of the wind. It had the added benefit of telling other cops, without words, that he was here in his official capacity even though that wasn’t strictly true.

His boss had ordered him to come although he’d already been on his way, and nothing would have stopped him. The Crisis Negotiation Unit could argue they needed to follow up with a victim from one of their cases who was involved with a possible first-degree murder charge. CNU would have invaluable input into this case, but that would happen later, if Darby was formally charged.