Nick reached for her hand and held it between both of his. He sat that way, with Carrie on one side of him and Sam on the other, until they heard the others come in through the kitchen.

Hand-in-hand, John’s parents, Graham and Laine O’Connor, entered the room with their son Terry and daughter Lizbeth trailing behind them. Graham and Laine, both nearly eighty, were as fit and trim as people half their age. They had snow-white hair and year-round tans from spending most of their time riding horses. When they saw Nick, they lit up with delight.

He released Carrie’s hand and got up to greet them both with hugs. Terry shook his hand and Lizbeth went up on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. He introduced them to Sam.

“What’re you doing here?” Graham asked. “Isn’t the vote today?”

Nick glanced down at the floor, took a second to summon the fortitude to say what needed to be said, and then looked back at them. “Come sit down.”

“What’s going on, Nick?” Laine asked in her lilting Southern accent, refusing to be led to a seat. “You don’t look right. Is something wrong with John?”

Her mother’s intuition had beaten him to the punch.

“I’m afraid so.”

Laine gasped. Her husband reached for her hand, and right before Nick’s eyes, the formidable Graham O’Connor wilted.

“He was late for work today.”

“That’s nothing new,” Lizbeth said with a sisterly snicker. “He’ll be late for his own funeral.”

Nick winced at her choice of words. “We couldn’t reach him, so I went over there to wake him up.”

“Damned foolish of him to be sleeping late on a day like this,” Graham huffed.

“We thought so, too,” Nick conceded, his stomach clutching with nausea and despair. “When I got there…”

“What?” Laine whispered, reaching out to grip Nick’s arm. “What?”

Nick couldn’t speak over the huge lump that lodged in his throat.

Sam stood up. “Senator, Mrs. O’Connor, I’m so very sorry to have to tell you that your son’s been murdered.”

Nick knew if he lived forever, he would never forget the keening wail that came from John’s mother as Sam’s words registered. He reached for Laine when it seemed like she might faint. Instead, she folded like a house of cards into his arms.

Carrie kept saying, “No, no, no,” over and over again.

With Lizbeth crying softly behind him and Terry’s eyes glassy with tears and shock, Graham turned to Sam. “How?”

“He was stabbed in his bed.”

Nick, who continued to hold the sobbing Laine, was grateful that Sam didn’t tell them the rest. He eased Laine down to the sofa.

“Who would want to kill my John? My beautiful, sweet John?”

“We’re going to find out,” Sam said.

“Sam is the lead detective on the case,” Nick told them.