Isn’t it funny how in a crisis, your brain starts taking pictures? All those snapshots of color and light and sound and smells, ready to be held up and turned over and examined at arm’s length. The iciness of the velvet night. The mist of the waterfall rising over the river. The smell of woodsmoke in the air.

My neck prickled with unease, and I stood. I peered through the murky darkness and there he was, emerging from a room at the back of the warehouse. He strode toward me quickly, his face open and friendly. He smiled. It was the smile that made me drop my hands. Relief peeled away my defenses and everything in me relaxed.

But then I saw a flash of silver. I started to turn away, but it was too late. The knife burrowed into my side with a moist thwump.

I looked down, confused. The blade was buried so deep that the hand holding it was pressed almost flat against my stomach. My pulse hammered against the steel.

And then I felt the fire. My mouth dropped open. The blood was rushing out of me too fast, I knew, soaking my shirt, turning it from white to red in seconds. It was too late. Too late to save myself.

I looked into those familiar eyes, mouthed a single word.

You.

The knife slid out of me, a sickening, wet sound. Blood pooled at the bottom of my throat. And then I fell, an abrupt, uninterrupted drop.

I blinked, my brain softening, dulling. Images clicked by, one by one.

Polished black shoes.

The blur of snow as it tumbled past the open door.

The two-by-fours standing against the wall.

My body felt like it was composed of nothing but air. I had failed.

And now Josh would be left alone.

CHAPTER 46

DR. PALMER LOOKED DOWN at me with stoic, dispassionate eyes. He grabbed my purse and opened it, pulling out my gun and shoving it down the back of his pants, the bloody knife still clutched in one hand.

“Where are they, Emma? Where’d you hide the drugs?”

I pressed my hands to my side, trying to staunch the blood where he’d stabbed me. I kicked my feet out, trying to scramble away from him, but my back almost instantly hit the wall. I had nowhere to go.

“The fentanyl,” he pressed. “Ben said he doesn’t have it. You were the last person here.”

I closed my eyes.

Don’t worry. You’re not the only doctor I’ve worked with.

Answers clicked into place.

The fentanyl. The briefcase. The confusing text on the old Nokia: I’ll get fentanyl from the doc.

Pamela’s greeting: So you’re the doc.

Ben’s cagey answers to all my questions.

Ben had been working with Dr. Palmer.

“You got the fentanyl,” I whispered. “You killed Santiago. Beatrice.”