Images of her sister as a child with crooked teeth, big eyes, and freckles sprayed across a stubby little nose raced through her brain. In childhood, Cammie had adored her older sister. But then she’d changed, weathering the ravages of adolescence to grow long legs and breasts the boys noticed. Her face had become sculpted with high cheekbones, wide eyes, and a sharp chin. Her mouth could curve into a wide smile or turn quickly into a tight little pout that made her all the more fascinating.

Even to a boy Valerie had barely known, a dark-eyed tough who had turned into the cop standing before her: Reuben Montoya.

Val felt her jaw drop as she recognized him now. Gone was his bad-boy swagger, but there was still evidence of the rebel beneath the badge: a goatee that couldn’t be department approved and a diamond stud in one ear, proof, she supposed, of his ability to go undercover, to turn, chameleon-like, into a drug dealer, a pimp, or whatever persona was necessary to make the bust.

Today he was here to pass on the unthinkable news about Cammie, a woman he’d known intimately years before.

Goose bumps chased up her arms as she glanced into Montoya’s hard face and tried to read his mind. “You knew her. You knew my sister.”

He nodded, his lips so tight as to show white.

“Wait a second,” Valerie said, her brain coming back to life as she took in Montoya’s leather jacket, T-shirt, and jeans. Street clothes. “Detectives?” She felt her insides tighten. These guys weren’t the usual beat cops sent to inform the next of kin about a loved one’s death. “You’re investigating my sister’s death?” Her heart was knocking wildly. “What the hell happened to her?”

“Please, Ms. Renard,” Bentz said, his gaze straying to the man and woman on the porch, “let’s take this inside.”

“What are you saying?” Val asked. “There was some kind of accident? Where? At the convent?”

But she saw a darker answer in Montoya’s eyes, and her mind raced ahead.

“No, not an accident.” Her voice was hoarse, raspy. “She was killed?”

Or took her own life.

But she didn’t say it, didn’t want to believe any of this, including the chilling fact that the last e-mail she received from Cammie might have been a call for help or a suicide note that she received too late.

Can’t take it anymore.

Am leaving St. Marg’s.

You know why.

“Sweet Jesus,” she whispered, shaking from the inside out.

“Val.” Slade’s voice whispered against her ear, and he turned her toward her cottage where the back door stood open. Guiding her, he whistled to the dog and cast a warning glance at Montoya and Bentz. “Let’s just go inside and hear what the detectives have to say.”