She shook her head. His gaze was kind, sympathetic even. It didn’t help. She didn’t want to be here anymore. At this house, in this hallway, with too many shifting shadows in her head.

“Why would you have your back to an open staircase?” Alex asked.

D.D. glanced around, realizing it was a fair question. She, Phil, Neil and Alex all stood at the top of the stairs. And each of them kept the opening in their line of sight, an instinctual habit, she’d guess, as well as a prudent one.

“I was looking behind me,” she whispered.

They stared at her.

She turned, gazing down the hall toward the open bedroom door. The overpowering odor of blood. The long, dark fingers of night as she stood alone in the shadows. She hadn’t wanted to see. She had wanted to feel. And then . . .

“I heard something.”

“Something?” Phil asked gruffly. “Or someone?”

“I . . . I don’t know. I turned. And then I fell.”

“No.”

“What?” She turned toward Russ, still standing halfway down the stairs. Fixed with the gazes of four cops, he suddenly flushed.

“I mean, not likely.”

“How so?”

“Your injury, the avulsion fracture, is pretty rare. It only happens when enough force causes the tendon to break off a chunk of bone at the origin or insertion point. Bones are pretty strong,” Russ continued, as if this should be obvious to them. “Tendons don’t just shear off pieces under conditions of average force. We’re talking a great deal of stress. As in, D.D. would have to have considerable momentum during her fall. Say, she ran off the top of the stairs, or she jumped. Except, given that she was facing backward at the time . . .”

“Oh my God,” D.D. whispered. “I didn’t fall.”

“No.” Alex wrapped his arm protectively around her waist. “You were pushed.”

Chapter 7

DADDY USED TO SAY blood equals love. Then he would laugh. And press deeper with the razor. He liked to watch the blood well up slowly. ‘No need to rush these things,’ he’d whisper. ‘Take your time. Enjoy the show.’”

Shana’s slurred voice drifted off. My sister wasn’t looking at me anymore but at some distant point on the bone-white wall. Prison medical ward. About as grim as a prison cell, except here the bolted steel bed came complete with wrist and ankle restraints.

They’d found her in her cell during the 6:00 A.M. roll call, Superintendent McKinnon had reported. Shana had been curled in the fetal position on her bed, which, according to the floor CO, was unusual enough. When she remained unresponsive to verbal cues, a security team armed with mattress shields had been summoned to forcibly enter her cell. More time lost, but my sister’s own fault. To date, she’d killed two guards, plus one inmate, during her incarceration. When it came to an inmate with her reputation, nothing was left to chance.