Harry pushed back his chair. Sweat ran down his sides. “Look, I have no idea what this woman was thinking. I’m not responsible for whatever reasons she may have had for breaking into my parents’ house. And I resent this line of questioning.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Owen.” The detective’s eyes were sympathetic. “We are merely trying to figure out why she was in the house of your parents. The circumstances are unusual.”

The panic that had his heart in a chokehold loosened its grip. “Of course.” You need to calm down. “My mother had narcotics. I suspect this woman was a drug addict.”

“I understand your mother was very ill,” Detective Ellis said.

“Yes.” Harry swallowed. “She was palliative. She had days—”

“Weeks!” Mel spat the word so hard that saliva sprayed the smooth veneer of the table.

Harry exhaled. “She had been sent home to die, Dad.”

And she had, indeed. Just not in the manner any of them had expected.

There was a moment of silence.

The detective cleared his throat. “I’d like you to take me through what happened in the living room, Harry.”

Dread tightened Harry’s stomach.

“You heard someone?”

Harry swallowed. “Yes. My dad chased after him—we thought the intruder was a man—and I ran after my dad.” Harry closed his eyes. Then he opened them. “He caught up to the intruder. The man—goddammit, woman—hit him in the face.”

“With a weapon?”

“No. Her fist.”

Detective Ellis studied Mel’s face. “Did she hurt you, Mr. Owen?”

“Yes. In the jaw.” Mel pointed to the spot where Leah’s elbow had connected with his face. A faint bruise tinged his flesh.

Harry leaned forward, palms on the table. “I thought she was going to grab Dad’s gun.”

“Which was where?”

“On my lap,” Mel said.

“So what did you do?”

“I grabbed it first,” Harry said, before his father could say anything more. Leave this to me, Dad. “But she turned on us. I had flashbacks to when my parents’ store was robbed…”

The timing had to be perfect. Heat of the moment, flashbacks, justifiable reaction. “I remembered the moment my dad was shot by those robbers.”

Mel threw his son a pained look.

“And I pulled the trigger.” Harry’s voice shook a little. “I wasn’t trying to kill her.” Wasn’t he? Wasn’t he trying to kill her when he fired that second shot?

No. I closed my eyes. If I had wanted to kill her, I would have kept them open. “I just wanted to stop her.”

“Did she verbally threaten you, Harry?”

She had been trying to say something. But he didn’t want to listen to this intruder who had terrified his mother to death. His voice hardened. “No. And she hit my father.”

“Was she carrying a weapon?”

Harry frowned. “I don’t know. I thought she might be armed…”