The woman had a backbone of steel. If Gabby had asked Great-Aunt Isabel, the woman who’d taken her in when her mom died, to drive here from Ohio and rip down the house with her bare hands, she would have. She was that woman. Strong. Decent. Pissed. A retired prosecutor and the reason Gabby had gone to law school in the first place. The perfect ally.

Gabby looked at the copies she’d kept. Wrinkled, with sticky notes posted all over them. Each death reviewed, analyzed, and cataloged. The companion list Tami had started about possible related cases led in more directions, added more fuel, but finding common denominators across the cases proved futile.

Some cases had one therapist, but just as many cases had other professionals, or none. Different judges and lawyers. Some of the deaths had nothing to do with a court case or divorce. In every single one, if she looked long enough, she found a nasty rumor or an allegation that eventually got dropped.

Melissa Schone popped up regularly as the detective, but she didn’t have a say in calling cause of death in any case. Gabby also had to admit that Schone worked in the area. Her being involved in most of the Maryland cases made sense. They’d happened in her jurisdiction. A Dr. Downing had also made more than one appearance when kids were involved.

“This is getting me nowhere.” She let out a yell loud enough to echo through the duplex but not loud enough to draw attention from the neighbors. She chalked the shouting up to a form of primal scream therapy.

With her concentration waning, her mind traveled to Liam and Kennedy. She’d worried about them all last night during their drive to New York. More than once, she’d called and talked with both of them. Not about important things like parentage or danger. About easy topics like Liam’s terrible taste in music and strange love of fast-food tacos.

With them safe, or as safe as they could be, Gabby tried to focus on the papers in front of her, but the ink blurred. Her mind made connections then abandoned them. Her notes were a jumbled mess of nothing, or possibly something. The work involved meticulous knot untying and string making.

“This is impossible.” She made the comment to the silent room as she stood to refill her coffee mug. Maybe the sixth cup would help her experience a breakthrough . . . or finally convince her that Rob saw a conspiracy where none existed.

Coincidences happened. All of that buildup amounting to nothing was possible . . . except for his death. She’d tried to find more information about that on the Internet, but details were sparse. Everyone seemed to agree he’d died in a tragic hit-and-run that likely would never be solved. A horrible story but not an unheard-of one in a city.