Everything to Lose
Page 32
She leaned into his hands, shook her head slowly.
“What happened?” Hailey Wyatt appeared in the doorway.
Just hours earlier they had been talking about Spencer. She had opened up to Hailey and the others about Spencer. She’d told Hailey about being trapped in that marriage. And now… Schwartzman hugged herself to fight the shaking.
“My God, you look like you’ve seen a ghost, Schwartzman,” Hailey said. “Are you okay?”
If only Spencer were a ghost. But he was all too real. The victim’s dress was yellow. She wore no jewelry. These were just coincidences.
“Shit. Did you know her?”
“No. It’s not her—” She pressed her palm to her chest. Hers was there. She felt suddenly exposed. As though by speaking of Spencer at dinner, she had conjured him into being right here. She had allowed herself to open up about him, and here he was.
“Why would you think she’d know the victim?” Hal asked.
“I don’t know, but they look alike,” Hailey said. “The wavy hair, the shape of the face, the nose. It must have freaked her out.”
They did look alike. God, how had he managed to find a woman who looked like her? She wasn’t imagining it. The lack of jewelry, the dress, the flowers. It was all him.
“No,” Hal said. “She didn’t freak out until she saw the necklace.”
Schwartzman remained against the wall. Her bare hands pressed to the skin on her neck. It was icy cold and also slick, like a body coming out of the morgue refrigeration unit after being washed down.
“It’s a cross with the Star of David on it,” Hailey said. “And a little gemstone in the star.”
Would they think she was crazy when she showed them? She had spent months building up their trust. It took so little to break it.
What choice did she have? She couldn’t hide the pendant from them.
Schwartzman forced herself to lower her hands. “It’s a Christian cross with a Star of David on it,” she said, struggling to get the words out. “The Star of David is placed exactly where the heart would be if the cross were a woman. A tiny diamond in the center of the star.”
Schwartzman fingered the chain on her neck, located the pendant under her tank. To celebrate their first wedding anniversary, her father had designed a pendant for her mother.
The room tipped, and Schwartzman closed her eyes.
A pendant identical to the one on the dead woman.
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About the Author
Danielle Girard is the bestselling author of Chasing Darkness, The Rookie Club series, and the Dr. Schwartzman Series—Exhume, Excise, Expose, and Expire, featuring San Francisco medical examiner Dr. Annabelle Schwartzman. Danielle’s books have won the Barry Award and the RT Reviewers’ Choice Award, and two of her titles have been optioned for movies.
A graduate of Cornell University, Danielle received her MFA at Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina. She, her husband, and their two children split their time between San Francisco and the Northern Rockies. Visit her at www.daniellegirard.com.