“Hm. I hadn’t thought about the stress on the lab techs.”

“You should. Detectives are always in our faces with ‘Where are my results? What’s taking you so long? What the hell do you do in here all day?’ Then they look at my computer monitor like they expect me to be playing video games or something.”

Rafe winced, because he’d done the same thing more times than he wanted to admit. “I think I’m going to take an apology offering to the lab.”

She laughed. “If it’s anything like my lab, make it a dessert. I bet your mother would make you something delicious to take in.”

“I’ll ask her the next time I see her.”

Mercy sighed. “Can you not tell anyone about this? I mean, Farrah knows, but I don’t want people to think I’m flighty or irresponsible. Especially after that video.”

Rafe couldn’t hold back his scowl. “Of course I won’t, but you weren’t flighty at work. You made a mistake. And that is so different from the video that I don’t even know where to start. You were blameless in that. Farrah told us that she’d dragged you to that party.” He glanced over to see her lips droop sadly. “It wasn’t her fault, either. Don’t think I’m blaming her. I’m blaming the asshole who put something in your drink.”

“I wasn’t being careful, but it’s exhausting, always being careful. I told myself before we went to the party that I was going to have fun. I was going to be . . . normal.”

“You being careful or careless is immaterial. You did nothing wrong.”

“Head knows it. Heart, not so much. But Farrah did notice I was gone.” She huffed a little chuckle. “She went all badass superwoman, barging up the stairs and shoving people aside. I don’t remember it, but it was on the original version of the video the police recovered. She busted open the door just in time and shoved him out of the way and grabbed the phone from Prescott’s roommate.”

Farrah had said that she’d gotten to Mercy in time, but hearing it again made him sag with relief. “The one who sold the video to Jeff Bunker’s trashy rag.”

“Yeah. Asshole,” she muttered. “I don’t know how the roommate got a copy of the video, unless his phone automatically uploaded it to the cloud. Which is possible.”

“Very possible. This was what, six years ago? We weren’t automatically looking at the cloud back then. Not like now, anyway. And speaking of now . . . we’re here.”

They’d passed through the town of Likely about ten minutes before he’d asked her about her leave and were now rolling into the town of Snowbush, population one hundred sixty-two. There were the general store, a hardware store, a diner, a gas station, and a post office.

“They should have called this town Probably,” she said, but her quip fell flat because her voice trembled.

He pulled into one of the empty spaces in front of the store, put the Subaru in park, then turned to face her. “Hey, what’s wrong?”