I've never been shot before, but I have to imagine that the feeling that came over me as I watched the detective on the news had to be pretty damned close. I flopped backward against the couch as if I’d been struck and then sat frozen for a few moments. Keith was still talking, and the woman’s mouth was moving on the screen, but my head was filled with a shrill, high-pitched sound that blocked everything else out.

She’d just said that Beverly…

…was dead.

Beverly.

The woman who I’d shared a dinner table with last night.

Not just dead.

Murdered.

I choked on my next breath and then coughed loudly, bending over at my stomach as I gasped for air. Keith stopped talking and frowned, concern covering his face, but I raised a hand and shook my head as the coughing fit consumed me. When it was done, I took a long, slow breath, and he smiled.

“You all right?”

I nodded, and he went back to his story. I pretended to listen, but my gaze was on the screen. The woman speaking to the small audience was Detective Claire Puhl, her name printed at the bottom of the screen for a few seconds before disappearing. She was dressed impeccably—a perfect-fitting navy suit over a patterned green shirt and dark-purple lipstick that was both stylish and professional. She was talking about the details of the case—the neighborhood, the building, and, of course, Beverly—and every word that came out of her mouth was measured and said with confidence. It sounded like she was reading from a script, even though I had a feeling she wasn’t. Her face was made up of almost all sharp, angular brushstrokes, her eyebrows heavy and defined, her cheekbones high and pronounced. She looked like one of those people who meant every word they said and rarely joked around.

I swallowed.

“To anyone who has any information at all, I invite you to come forward using the tip line that’s on the screen,” she said. “The smallest detail can help solve this case and bring closure to the victim’s family. We need the entire community involved to catch the person who did this.”

The news then flashed to shaky footage of the apartment building, and my stomach sank further, even though I didn’t think it had any lower to go.

I was just there.

It looked so different on the screen than it did in real life. Not just because of the haze of police lights in the frames and the buzz of activity as they showed the street I’d been on so many times in the last week. No, it looked different because it wasn’t supposed to be real—just another blurry image of any Chicago apartment building that you see flash by on the news each night.