“Mornin’,” Rivers said and got only a grunt for a response. If nothing else, Nagley held a grudge, Rivers thought, as he kept going and found Mendoza sitting at his desk, staring at his computer. Hearing his footsteps, she spun his chair around to face him. “Let me guess,” she said, her expression stony, her eyes flashing. “You were down in evidence. And you were going through Willow Valente’s things.”

“Just checking.”

“Did you take anything?” she demanded.

“Of course not.”

As if she hadn’t heard his denial, she said, “Because if you did, that would be reason for you to lose your job. It could throw off the whole case.”

“I said, ‘I didn’t.’”

Her gaze narrowed just a fraction. “Then I don’t have to turn you in.” When he was about to protest, she held up a hand. “I know,” she said solemnly. “I know.”

He felt suddenly hot inside and saw his entire career disintegrating before his eyes. Worse yet, he saw the case over which he’d felt so much angst being destroyed. Thrown out of court, a murderer walking free. Because of his actions.

He looked his partner squarely in her suspicious near-black eyes and said, “I took nothing.” And for once he wasn’t lying.

CHAPTER 46

CHAPTER 46

Sophia stared across the street at the park, where mothers in scarves and hats and boots were playing with children bundled against the cold. One woman was helping her three kids build a snowman; another, holding a cup of coffee, waited at the bottom of a slide for her toddler to come screaming and giggling down the corkscrew curves to land at her feet, where a puddle had frozen over, the ice broken by so many tiny, booted feet.

Heartsick, she knew she had to stop the madness.

She couldn’t go through with her part of the scheme. She just couldn’t. It was all getting out of hand—way out of hand. People were dying! Being murdered! That wasn’t supposed to be part of the plan.

But how could she tell Julia? How could she back out?

She walked back from the taco stand, where the woman behind the counter had said “Merry Christmas” as she’d bagged up three tacos for Sophia—three! From the second she’d found out she was pregnant, she’d been ravenous. She trudged the three blocks to the apartment and, as she was unlocking the door, caught a glimpse of that Dabrowski dude walking Phoebe’s little dog along the bushes at the side of the parking lot. Sophia wondered about the landlady, how she’d had a seizure or something and ended up in a coma—Phoebe, who’d kept her EpiPen with her always. How the hell had that happened?