by Julie Miller
But Audrey was in no mood to be a media darling tonight. Gretchen’s death was personal. Private. She needed answers. She needed this to make sense. This was the second friend she’d lost in the past two years. Her mother had died the year before that. Standing around and waiting with the others would only give her time to feel, to remember, to hurt. And to have that kind of weakness caught on tape and posted in the public eye would only make the grief that much tougher to deal with. If she ever wanted to be known as something more than Rupert Kline’s little princess, then weakness wasn’t something anyone here was going to get a chance to observe.
With newfound resolve giving her strength, Audrey buttoned up the front of her cashmere blazer, stuffed her keys into the pocket of her jeans and slipped through the suits and cocktail dresses of the party guests gathered outside the front gate. They parted like zombies, shocked and murmuring, as she made a beeline for the uniformed policeman standing by the driveway’s wrought-iron gates. “Excuse me, officer? I’m a friend of the family.”
Her father had taught her that standing as tall as her five feet five inches allowed and walking and talking with a purpose usually convinced people that she belonged wherever she wanted to be. But the young officer wasn’t fooled. Leaving one arm resting on his belt beside his gun, he raised his hand to stop her. “I’m sorry, miss. No one’s allowed to come inside the gate.”
She tilted her chin to argue that she belonged here. “My father and Mr. Cosgrove went to Harvard together. I don’t think he would mind…”
And then she saw the two detectives—one tall and light-haired, jotting notes, the other shorter and darker—talking to a pair of crime scene investigators, each wearing their reflective vests and holding their bulky kits in their hands. What were they doing outside the house? Had something happened on the grounds, as well? The blip she’d seen on her laptop said the victim had been found in her bedroom upstairs.
Why weren’t they interviewing suspects? Taking pictures? Why were they just standing around? Didn’t they know what a beautiful soul Gretchen had been? How much her parents and friends had loved her? Why weren’t they tearing that house apart to find out who’d killed her?
Audrey took a deep breath to cool her frustration, wishing she’d taken the time to don a suit and high heels instead of quickly pulling on jeans and a jacket over her pajamas. She’d been up late working at home instead of attending Gretchen’s party where she might have been able to do some good by kick-starting the investigation and putting these people to work. With no makeup and her hair hanging down to her shoulders in loose waves, she knew she looked more like a teenager than a grown woman. But she wasn’t about to let her appearance stop her anymore than had the two red lights she’d run speeding across town to get here.
She’d known Gretchen Cosgrove since kindergarten. Their adult paths had taken them in different directions, but they saw each other at social functions like this one often enough to keep in touch. A friendship like that didn’t die. A woman Audrey’s own age shouldn’t die.
“Please.” She reached into her back pocket and looped the lanyard with her Office of the District Attorney identification badge around her neck. The job was new, her switch from private practice to public prosecutor a calculated bid to establish her independence beyond the shadow cast by her father. She hadn’t had the opportunity to pull rank without her father’s influence to back her up yet. But this was as good a time to try as any. “I’m an officer of the court. I’m sure there’s something I can do to help.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” the officer apologized, “but my orders are strict. Nobody crosses the cordon tape until SWAT clears the scene, not even the commissioner herself.”
“I don’t understand. Wasn’t the body found a couple hours ago? The crime scene is getting cold.”
His gaze dropped down to her ID badge. Apparently, the judicial emblem held enough sway for him to lean in to whisper. “There may be a bomb inside.”
“A bomb?”
He put a finger to his lips. “That’s what the note with the body said. Captain Cutler said until we know more, we don’t want to say or do anything that will cause a panic.”
Cutler. She knew that name. That meant his SWAT team was on the premises, and that Gretchen’s death might not be the only tragedy KCPD had to worry about. Audrey glanced around, recognizing many of the guests in attendance. There was the party planner Audrey had hired herself in the past, Clarice Darnell, along with her staff—servers, caterers, parking attendants. These were friends, colleagues, acquaintances Audrey had met at society events similar to this one. They were already traumatized by the news that their hostess tonight had been murdered. She didn’t wish more trouble on any of them. “No. We wouldn’t.”
“You can check with me later,” the policeman offered. “I’ll let you in as soon as Captain Cutler gives the okay.”
She nodded her thanks. “In the meantime, is there someone in charge I could speak with to get some details about what’s happened? It’s already on the internet. Rumors are going to fly if we don’t contain this.”
“Ma’am, all I’ve been told is to keep people back—”
“Never mind.” She put up her hands, knowing she was pushing too hard, knowing he was just doing his job, knowing she wouldn’t get her answers here. “Thank you.”
“Audrey?”
She turned at the familiar voice and hurried to meet the tall blond man striding toward her. “Harper.”
He wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her clear off the ground, squeezing her tight as he wept against her neck. “She’s gone, Audrey. Gretchen’s gone.” She held on tight and rocked back and forth with him. “I loved her, you know.”
“I know. We all did.”
He gulped in a shuddering breath and eased his grip enough so her toes could touch the ground. “We were always together at school—you, me, Gretchen, Charlotte, Donny, Val and the others.”
Audrey rubbed circles at the collar of his gabardine suit, inhaling his familiar scents of tobacco and after-shave, sharing the loss with him. Their whole group of friends through high school had been tight, and though their lives and jobs had taken them in different directions after graduation, they’d found a way to keep in touch, trading calls and notes, coming together in times of tragedy like tonight.
“I used to think you were the one.” Harper sighed, recalling the brief time they’d dated in high school.
“But when I got back from law school, something about Gretch had changed. She was still as beautiful and fun and goofy as ever, but…”
“She grew up.” She’d seen the new maturity in the once-capricious Gretchen, too.
“I asked her to marry me. We were going to announce it tonight.”
That she didn’t know. Tears welled up in Audrey’s eyes, and she pulled back to touch his face. “Oh, Harper.”
“I saw her tonight. In her bed. Before the cops chased us out.” His red-rimmed eyes were dry now, and a brave smile creased his face. “You know she never gets anywhere on time—she changes her mind about what she’s wearing or can’t find the right jewelry to match. But after the guests had been here for almost an hour, I got worried. I went upstairs to…” His smile faltered and Audrey’s stomach clenched to receive the blow. “She looked so perfect lying there, like she was sleeping. But she… That bastard hurt her. Tortured her. There were marks around her wrists and neck. Her face was… I touched her and she…she was so cold.”
Audrey looped her arms around his neck and hugged him again, hiding her own face against the starch of his collar. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s just like Val all over again.” They’d consoled each other the night Valeska Gordeeva Gallagher had been murdered, too. “Only, I never saw Val’s body until the visitation at the funeral home. I saw Gretch—”
“Shh, Harp. Don’t think of that. Let’s remember how beautiful Gretchen and Val were.”
“You’re right. You’re always right. I can count on
you to say the right thing, can’t I?” Someone jostled them in the crowd and Harper pulled away, straightening his tie, breathing deeply, tightening his jaw to keep the tears from falling again. “She’s not coming back. I’ll never see her smile or hear her laugh again.”
With that grim pronouncement, the first tears spilled over onto Audrey’s cheeks. She quickly swiped them away. “Harper—”
“I’d better get back to her parents. The press want them to say something. I’ve been running interference.” He bent down to press a chaste kiss to her forehead.
“They’ll be glad to know you’re here.”
Another tear burned in the corner of her eye. She sniffed as her sinuses began to congest. Harper might have sucked it up, but she needed a minute to compose herself. “I’ll be over to talk to them soon.”
“Gotta go.”
He walked away, leaving her shaking. She’d listened and offered comfort without realizing how much she needed it herself. They might not have been the closest of friends anymore, or else she would have known about the engagement—Gretchen had chosen a social path while Audrey had focused on her career—but she had been her oldest friend. And now there was a spot inside her, splitting open, emptying out, leaving grief and regret and helplessness in its place.
Audrey pressed a fist to her trembling lips and surveyed the crowd. She wasn’t going to lose it here. The size of the gathering had nearly doubled with press and police, people who knew the Cosgroves and curious strangers. She couldn’t expect to hold on to her anonymity much longer, yet she couldn’t afford to be spotted as a bawling wreck—not if she wanted to impress her father and his old-school cronies, not if she intended to win the case she’d been assigned this afternoon and solidify her position in the D.A.’s office.
But the tears were burning for release. Hugging her arms in front of her, Audrey ducked her head and shuffled through the crowd, trying to draw as little attention as possible as she desperately sought out a private refuge. Her exposed skin would flush with every emotion she was feeling—a telltale, redheaded curse she’d endured her whole life—and there’d be no hiding the ache blooming inside her.
She shifted directions, deciding she should just get inside her car and drive away. But she stopped when she reached the curb. A camera crew was setting up a remote broadcast post on the opposite side of the street, and they’d recognize her as soon as she walked by.
Her throat raw from the constriction of emotions she held in check, Audrey turned and followed the sidewalk around the fringe of the gathering and just kept walking. Once she realized the voices from the crowd were fading, she stopped and raised her head, pulling her hair back from her face and tucking it behind her ears. She’d nearly reached the neighbor’s house an eighth of a mile away.
There was her sanctuary. Not the house, but the red-leafed hedgerows and iron fencing that ran between the two properties. With the press and police focused at the front of the estate, the side yards were empty, shadowed and blessedly quiet. Audrey glanced behind her to Gretchen’s house. They’d played hide-and-seek together on the massive grounds when they were children, and the memories of Gretchen’s easy laugh and adventurous imagination reignited the grief that was set to consume her.
She needed to get out of here. Now.
She darted around the brick pillar at the corner of the Cosgroves’ fence. Oh, Lord.
The security lights in the neighbor’s front yard flashed on, reflecting off the white gold of her watch band. Reacting like the trespasser she was, Audrey tugged the sleeve of her jacket over her wrist and crouched down between the fence and hedge. The night was conspiring against her efforts to find a private moment to acknowledge her grief and center herself. Maybe she should just curl up in a ball here and let the tears flow.
But that would only add fuel to the paparazzi’s rumor mill if they discovered an assistant district attorney huddled in the mud behind a burning bush shrub outside a crime scene.
“Why didn’t I just stay home?” she muttered. Yet, as her jeans soaked up the chilly dampness from the ground beneath her knee, Audrey saw that she hadn’t triggered the security lights, after all.
Instead, she got a clear look at the culprit. An armed SWAT cop, wearing a flak vest over his black uniform, was lugging a large metal box to the back of the SWAT van parked in the driveway. Where had he come from? He was grinching to himself, maybe complaining about setting off the lights with his approach.
He set the box on the van’s bumper with a heavy thunk, and the entire vehicle rocked, giving an indication as to the considerable weight he’d carried. The man unsnapped the strap beneath his chin and pulled off his helmet, dropping it to the concrete at his feet before scrubbing his black-gloved fingers over the top of his hair.
For a moment, Audrey forgot about the reporters and the mud and her grief. As he opened the back doors and hefted the box inside, his movements caught the lights in his short dark hair, revealing blue-black glints in the rumpled waves. Was he packing up? Did that mean the house had been cleared? The bomb discovered and dismantled?
He had the doors closed before she could think to move, and now she was forced to kneel there until the motion-detector lights went back off or the officer climbed inside the van. But he didn’t appear to be in any hurry. With his rifle looped casually through the crook of his arm, he slowly turned, taking note of the vehicles in the street, the neighbors scurrying along the sidewalk to get a closer look at all the activity. Apparently oblivious to the approach of winter in the air, he unbuttoned the cuffs of his black shirt and rolled up the sleeves over a pair of muscular forearms. With a simple tilt of his head, he spoke into the microphone strapped to his Kevlar vest.
He was on guard, looking for something or someone, scanning his surroundings, his dark gaze skimming past her hiding spot. Audrey hugged her arms closer to her body and made herself even smaller. Had he seen her? Sensed her presence? She could hide from friends and avoid the press, but something about the intensity of those watchful eyes warned her that it would be very hard to keep anything hidden from him.
Audrey held her breath. Waited. Tried to ignore the little tingles of awareness sparking beneath the emotions she held so tightly in check. He wasn’t as tall as Harper or even her father. But he was all muscle, all alertness, all coiled energy. If the killer had planted a bomb inside the Cosgrove house, he looked like the type of man who could take care of it. He looked like the type of man who could have saved Gretchen’s life in the first place.
Gretchen would have called him hot. She would have been introducing herself, flirting with him by now. She would have welcomed him as a friend and made him feel glad to be a part of her life long before Audrey even decided to admit he was handsome in an earthy, unpolished sort of way.
A tear leaked out, its hot moisture chapping her cheek in the cool breeze. Gretchen would have thought hiding in the shrubs to avoid the press and spy on hot guys was a grand adventure, but for Audrey this was pure torture. Another tear trailed along the same path, marking her skin. Grief could no longer wait for privacy and a sob squeezed through her throat in a muffled gasp.
Not here. Not now. The SWAT cop’s gaze swung back around and she shoved her knuckles against her lips, stifling the breathy whimper of each sob while the tears streamed over her hand. She could read the headlines now—Lawyer Can’t Handle Crime Scene, Muddy Misstep for Kline’s Daughter or Newest A.D.A. Runs and Hides. Just the kind of decorum and control that would inspire public confidence as she led the prosecution against gang-leader Demetrius Smith. Not.
But then a KCPD pickup pulled into the driveway behind the SWAT van and she had her chance to escape public scrutiny.
Audrey pushed to her feet, stumbling back against the iron fence, as that all-seeing cop walked up to meet the truck. Another uniformed officer—minus the armored vest and extra gear and weaponry of the first man—climbed out of the truck with a German shepherd bounding down behind him, to shake hands and trade greetings. By the t
ime the SWAT cop had stooped down to wrestle the dog around its ears, Audrey was moving. Holding up her hand to shield her face from the prickly branches of the hedgerow, she jogged several yards along the fence until the bustle and bright lights from the front of the house could no longer be seen or heard.
She inhaled a lungful of the cool night air and exhaled on sobs that shook through her. Curling her fingers around the cold, unyielding iron of a fence post, she held on and let the grief overtake her.
Seconds passed, maybe a minute or two, as the pain knifed through her. With one hand braced on her knee and the other gripping the fence to keep from toppling over, she wept for Gretchen and for the void her death created in so many lives, including her own. She’d never learned Gretchen’s gifts for spontaneity and handling stress and sharing joy, and now she never would. Kansas City had lost a generous and enthusiastic young benefactor. Harper Pierce had lost a fiancée. The Cosgroves had lost a daughter. Audrey had lost another friend.
Finally, the sobs became little gasps and hiccups as the worst of it passed. Audrey’s diaphragm ached, her sinuses throbbed against her skull, her eyes felt puffy and hot. But she could think again. She could feel something beyond the pain—anger, perhaps, determination to honor Gretchen’s memory and vindicate her murder.
And she could hear.
Footsteps.
Audrey snapped her attention to the soft, even rhythm of someone moving through the Cosgroves’ backyard. Although muffled by the fallen leaves and dewy grass, there was no mistaking the tread of company cutting between the garden paths and towering oaks that shaded the yard on the other side of the fence.
The police officers she’d seen all carried flashlights. But this, this was something different. A noise in the dark. The whisper of stealth.
Pushing her hair away from her hot, sticky cheeks, Audrey peered between the iron bars to identify the source of the sound among the trees. Too big to be a squirrel or rabbit. Too real for her to feel safe. The breeze rustled through the hedge, sending a chill dancing along her spine. If that was a cop, where was his flashlight? And if it wasn’t, how had he gotten past security inside the front gates?
