He finished dressing, combing his hair until it was smoothly swept back from his face. It was inky black, like his mother’s, but silver threaded the thick strands. He did a quick sweep of his room to make sure that nothing personal was left out. He had brought very little with him except a change of clothes, his toiletries, and his laptop. He placed that in the room safe. Then he locked his room, double-checking the door.

He crossed the hallway and knocked on his father’s door. The peephole was too high for his father to use. “It’s me.” He kept his voice low, and glanced over his shoulder. The corridor was empty.

The door finally swung open. Harry stepped inside his father’s room, closing the door behind him.

His father wheeled himself toward Harry. To his relief, his father was dressed, his cheeks ruddy from his morning shave. But he had missed a small patch of grey stubble by the edge of his jaw. It made Harry want to weep.

“Hi Dad,” he said, raising his voice over the sound of the television. A commercial blared in the dim room, the sunny voice of the announcer setting Harry’s teeth on edge. “Why is the TV so loud?” He scanned the room for the remote.

“Because I want to hear everything they say. About Salma. And how those bastards killed her.” His father’s lips trembled. Bloodless, thin, twisted with grief.

God, his father was a mess. Detective Ellis would take him down in minutes. “Look, Dad, we have a meeting this morning. With a lawyer. You need to listen to everything he says. And then we have to go to the police station.”

His father swung his gaze away from the television. “Have they caught the guy that did this to her?”

Harry shook his head. “One suspect is still on the loose. The other is in the hospital.”

“The hospital?” Mel Owen’s finger twitched on his trousers. “Why is he in the hospital?”

“Because I shot her—”

A loud knock made them both jump.

Jesus Christ.

Harry flung open the door. The front desk agent smiled cautiously at him.

How thick were the goddamned doors? Had she heard what he said?

He grabbed the handgrips on his father’s wheelchair. “Dad, we need to go see the lawyer now.”

He hoped like hell that Randall Barrett could fix the nightmare. Because it seemed like everything Harry did just made it worse.

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

8:42 a.m.

Pain.

It flared through Leah’s cells, raced across every nerve, gathering energy, until the cells fused together into a hot core.

RED. YELLOW. PURPLE.

WHITE HOT.

A supernova of agony.

She moaned.

The supernova began to swirl, white, purple, pink streaked with black, funneling into a cosmos of pure pain.

“Stay with us!”

The supernova exploded.

The black hole rushed up to consume her.

Chapter 13

Chapter 13

8:49 a.m.