‘What happened?’ Imogen said.

‘He jumped,’ he said, pulling away, embarrassed by his momentary emotional weakness.

‘Are you OK?’ she said.

‘I will be. What about you?’

‘Oh, I’m just dandy. Looking forward to putting this case behind us finally.’

‘Maybe we could get away together for a few days,’ Adrian said.

He desperately needed a holiday, but he didn’t want to be away from Imogen right now. He wanted to move forward and he wanted it to be with her.

‘I’d like that. Have you anywhere in mind?’

‘As long as you’re there, I really don’t care where we go.’

‘I know exactly what you mean,’ Imogen said. He could tell she was thinking about kissing him and what was left of his professionality fought hard not to oblige.

More police cars arrived on the scene and Adrian composed himself. He had to lie one last time to put this all behind them. No one could ever know that Parker had been in the house with him when Finn Blackwell died.

He turned to Imogen. ‘Let’s hope this is the end of it.’

They would work through the names of the students they had gathered and speak to the very few who had come through the game unscathed. Coley, Lassiter and Mitchell’s murders would get lumped in with the rest, and Adrian would go back to praying that Parker stayed away. Even if his gut told him that was unlikely, he was allowed to hope, wasn’t he?

Acknowledgements

Firstly, I would like to say a huge thank you to the people who read this series. I love hearing from you through my Facebook page or on twitter. I’m also extremely grateful to those people who leave Amazon reviews, because I love seeing what you guys think.

Thank you also to my family for putting up with me leaving half empty notebooks and scraps of paper everywhere.

Thanks to everyone at Avon Books, my wonderful publisher, for my great covers and all the hard work you put in. Thank you as well to Phoebe Morgan, my editor, who does an excellent job of turning my messy first drafts into something people want to read.

Thanks to Diane Banks and Kate Burke at Northbank Talent, for working so hard on my behalf. I absolutely couldn’t do this without you. Thanks as well to Ciara and James.

Thanks to Jeremy Fewster, for advice on the scenes I hate writing.

Thanks to all the book bloggers who support me and take part in the blog tours on my novels, as well as writing kickass reviews. You do a fab job and I really appreciate it. Also thanks to the Book Clubs on Facebook, including TBC and The Fiction Café – keep reading books!

Thanks as well to my fellow moderators in Crime Time Book Club on Facebook.

To my crime writing friends, thank you for being the most brilliant bunch. After years of feeling like the weird freak who says wildly inappropriate stuff in social situations, I met you lot. You are all wildly inappropriate and I love hanging out with you. I finally found my tribe.