Signy said nothing and tried to ignore the burning of her ears because she’d left her winter hat in her work vehicle. “Look, it’s extremely cold and this is going to take some time. Is there somewhere on campus I can interview you all?

“There’s a large foyer at the Geophysical Institute that I’m sure you can use,” Jacqui suggested, but she wasn’t stupid. “Did Darby kill Martin?”

Signy remained silent.

Jacqui’s voice went higher. “Or should we be worried about there being a killer on the loose?”

Signy didn’t need the whole town going into a panic. “We’re not looking for anyone else in connection to this case at this moment in time.”

Jacqui went white.

“If I can get your names, I will meet you up at the Institute.”

Signy wrote them down along with cell phone numbers and the crowd started to disperse.

Signy gave a sigh. Just as well. The Medical Examiner had arrived.

* * *

Ignoring the bitter wind, Eban strode from his rental car into the Police Department in Fairbanks, Alaska, at 2:56 PM. He’d spent the last five and a half hours getting here and every second had eroded his nerves like a lifetime of worry.

He’d been in Sea-Tac Airport, about to catch a flight back to Quantico when Darby had called him. He’d spent all last night helping negotiate a peaceful ending to a standoff in the headquarters of one of the world’s biggest tech giants. A woman had held one of the senior managers at gunpoint until the guy had admitted he’d passed her over for promotion several times because she’d rebuffed his lecherous advances. Eban had persuaded her she owed it to herself to come out of this situation alive.

He’d been thinking about Darby as he’d spoken to the woman. Thinking about how much she had to live for and how unfair the world was sometimes. He’d been thinking how hard it was to have distanced himself from the one woman in the world he wanted to spend more time with.

The euphoria of coming off a successful, non-violent end to a major incident that had caught national headlines crashed the second he’d heard Darby’s voice on the phone and realized she was in trouble.

I think I might have killed someone.

Big trouble. Life-changing trouble.

He’d told her to sit tight, call the police, and demand a lawyer. To say absolutely nothing until he or the lawyer got there.

Eban had managed to wrangle himself onto a full direct flight to Fairbanks by offering to act as an Air Marshal and he’d made it here in record time. Five and a half hours later than he wanted. That was a long time in police custody, especially for someone as vulnerable as Darby. Three hundred and thirty minutes of agony when all he wanted to do was bundle her close and protect her from whatever the hell was going on.

He held out his creds to the person behind the desk. “Supervisory Special Agent Eban Winters. Here to see Darby O’Roarke.”