Suddenly experiencing a strong sense of déjà vu. That she’d done this before. Told herself to go home, while heading toward a crime scene instead.

Of course. She’d repeated this pattern most of her adult life.

The only difference was that this time, her husband was already standing before the murdered woman’s home, and he didn’t appear surprised to see his wife approach.

“Doctor’s appointment okay?” Alex asked, lifting the bright-yellow tape so she could pass beneath it, onto the covered porch.

“I’m supposed to talk to my pain. What the hell do you think?”

“Does your pain speak back?”

“Apparently, that’s the nature of pain.”

“Interesting,” he said.

“Bullshit,” she declared.

She came to a halt beside him. Alex’s gaze was as calm as always, his face inscrutable. She felt her own heart race unsteadily, her breathing shallow. The pain, she told herself. Her own physical healing that depleted so much energy, even climbing up three damn steps required massive effort.

“They call you out?” she asked finally. “Require your expertise?” Alex spent most of his time teaching crime scene analysis at the police academy. He also served as a private consultant. And on occasion, to keep his skills current, he liked to work in the field, which was how they had met, so many years ago. At another townhome, not unlike this one, except there, it had appeared that a man had killed his entire family before turning the gun on himself.

D.D. still remembered walking that scene, following the trails of blood as Alex recited the story he saw written in each pool and spatter, of a wife, spinal column brutally severed from behind, an athletic teenage son, ambushed with a single thrust of a blade between the ribs, then the two younger kids, making their last stand in a back bedroom. The one who never made it out of that room. And the unluckier one who did.

“I knew you would come,” Alex said simply.

“Gonna wave me off? Put me back in my car where I belong?”

Her husband merely smiled. He reached out and tucked an errant blond curl behind her ear. “Might as well tell the wind not to blow. Come on, D.D. As it turns out, Boston PD would like some help on this one. As long as I’m here, why don’t we both take a tour?”

“This is why I didn’t name my pain Wilson,” she told him honestly.

Alex’s expression, however, had already turned somber. “Oh, I wouldn’t thank me just yet.”