Abigail partly blocked the way inside, her head cocked, her eyes—one green, one blue—scrutinizing Laurel. “I swear, it’s like looking in a mirror. Don’t you think?”

Laurel shook her head. “No. We both have reddish hair and different-colored eyes, but our bone structure is different, as is our skin tone.” Well, at least to somebody who’d seen the same face in the mirror for almost three decades. To anybody else, they might look like twins. But she wouldn’t admit that to Abigail. She couldn’t.

Abigail scoffed and pulled Laurel inside the home, where starkness reined in opposition to the warmth blowing through the space. The surfaces were hard concrete or stone, and all white or a light gray. Even the pillows on the new black leather sofa were a glaring white. Her original sofa had been barraged by bullets during the Snowblood Peak case. “We have more than red hair in common and you know it. Genuine red hair is found in only ten percent of the population, and ours is auburn. A true auburn with brown and red. What percentage has that color?”

“Minuscule,” Laurel agreed, brushing snow off her unfortunately rare hair color. She shrugged out of her coat and let Abigail hang it in the nearby closet before kicking off her boots on a mat near the door. “I’m not saying we lack rare genes.” Considering they had the exact same heterochromatic eyes, one blue, one green, and a burst of green in the blue one, they were definitely unusual, which was a much nicer description than what she’d been called many a time by a cruel classmate or two.

Of course, that had been back when she was growing up and didn’t know Abigail or even that she had a half sister. The truth had emerged during Laurel’s first case in Genesis Valley, when she’d been shocked to discover she had a half sister from a father she’d never known. Her mother had always refused to give Laurel the name of her father. Her mom had been underage and her father a pastor at the church, and there was no consent. Her mother still had nightmares about it. “Tell me about the flowers on your front lawn.”

Abigail gestured to the high-end leather sofa fronting a gas fireplace. “I’ll ignite this. You must be chilly.” She hustled over and flicked on a button, roaring the fire to life.

Laurel sat, even though she would’ve preferred to talk at the dining table or even the bar separating the kitchen from the great room. This was too casual. She glanced at the rear wide floor-to-ceiling windows, seeing the jagged, snow-covered mountains in the distance. Those windows lacked any covering, perfectly framing the freezing world outside. “The dahlias?” she prodded.

Abigail paused. “Could I get you anything to drink? How about coffee with a splash of Baileys? You look positively frigid.”