And I remember something, something I have not thought about for months now. The fragment is not so much a memory as it is a scent: rose petals, crushed, decaying, simmering outside my bedroom window in the Georgia heat. While Mama’s voice floats down the darkened hall, “I know something you don’t know….”

“Shhh, shhh, shhh,” I whisper now. My hand curves around my stomach and I think too much of things I have spent most of my life trying to forget.

“Shhh, shhh, shhh,” I try again.

And then, a sound from the base of the stairs …

In the last moments of the world as I know it, I wish I could tell you I heard an owl hoot out in the darkness. Or saw a black cat leap over the fence. Or felt the hairs tingle on the nape of my neck.

I wish I could tell you I saw the danger, that I put up one helluva fight. After all, I, of all people, should understand just how easily love can turn to hate, desire to obsession. I, of all people, should have seen it coming.

But I didn’t. I honestly didn’t.

And God help me, when his face materialized in the shadow of my doorway, my first thought was that he was just as handsome now as when we first met, and that I still wished I could trace the line of his jaw, run my fingers through the waves of his hair….

Then I thought, looking at what was down at his side, that I mustn’t scream. I must protect my daughter, my precious daughter still sleeping down the hall.

He stepped into the room. Raised both of his arms.

I swear to you I didn’t make a sound.

CHAPTER TWO

Sergeant Detective D.D. Warren loved a good all-you-can-eat buffet. It was never about the pasta—filler food to be sure, and just plain bad strategy if there was a carving roast to be had. No, over the years she had developed a finely honed strategy: stage one, the salad bar. Not that she was a huge fan of iceberg lettuce, but as a thirty-something single workaholic, she never bothered with perishables in her own fridge. So yeah, first pass generally involved some veggies, or God knows, given her eating habits, she’d probably develop scurvy.

Stage two: thinly sliced meat. Turkey was okay. Honey-baked ham, a step up. Rare roast beef, the gold medal standard. She liked it cherry red in the middle and bleeding profusely. If her meat didn’t jump a little when she poked it with her fork, someone in the kitchen had committed a crime against beef.

Though of course she would still eat it. At an all-you-can-eat buffet, one couldn’t have very high standards.