Chapter 2
I drive toward the flashing red and blue lights at the end of my sister’s normally quiet street.
The guard at the gate recognized me and waved me in without question, pity in his gaze.
Which means word has spread. I shove down all the emotions that want to rip free, the scream building in my throat.
Because if I let it free, I won’t stop screaming.
As I reach the cluster of golf carts near the end of the street, I pull up to a nearby curb and park, barely remembering to grab the keys.
I vaguely register someone giving the car and me a dirty look—this isn’t the kind of neighborhood where people drive fifteen-year-old Corollas or park along the curbs.
Here, people house their vehicles in their three- and four-car garages.
“Sloane.” I turn at a familiar male voice.
Because of shock, it takes me a moment to recognize the tall man breaking away from the cluster of people hovering around three different golf carts.
I blank on his name for a moment, but it’s Ava’s husband.
Ava Chatelain is Cara’s best friend and longtime coworker.
“Ryan. Where are the girls?” I can’t ask about Cara. It’s too much. Too…surreal.
I don’t want to hear the truth even if I know it in my bones. In the distance I see the perimeter the local police have set up as I question if they’re capable of handling…
Oh god. I can’t even think the word.
“All three are at our house. Ava’s with them. She picked up Riley from…”
He keeps talking but I tune him out as I hurry along the asphalt toward the barricades and tape. Cara’s girls are safe. That’s all I needed to know before I face what’s to come.
I realize he’s still next to me as I reach the officer standing guard.
His presence isn’t even necessary—all the neighbors are far enough back from the barricade, eager to watch the horror unfolding but not get close enough that it touches their pristine lives.
I know the thought is ugly, that Cara would give me that look of disappointment if I said it out loud.
I bite back a scream of agony as I think of her.
The man standing guard holds up a hand, his expression hard as a few drops of rain splatter across my face. “I’m sorry, ma’am, no one is allowed—”
“She’s family,” Ryan snaps out, his voice hard. “She lives here.”
The part about me living here isn’t true, but I don’t correct him. “I made the 911 call,” I rasp out. “I was on the phone with my sister when…” I can’t finish it.
The man’s expression softens slightly and he pulls out his radio, talks to someone on the other end, but I can’t process the words. I’m trying so hard to keep it together but I feel my control slipping, feel myself splitting apart at the seams.
I would kill for a drink.
The thought hits me so hard, so fast, I nearly stumble back.
I’ve been sober since Fiona was two. Over fourteen years.
In the beginning I used to miss drinking, the numbness, but it’s been a solid decade since I’ve had that urge.
I focus on the man in the suit heading down the driveway in long, even strides.
Ryan says something to me as the officer moves the barricade back to let me in, but I don’t hear the words and I don’t respond as somehow, my feet propel me forward.
“I’m Detective Garcia,” the man in the suit says. “You made the 911 call?” He pauses as he looks at me and something about him is familiar, but I can’t place it.
I nod, struggling to find my voice. “Yes,” I rasp out. “Is she…”
He pauses at the top of the driveway as a few more raindrops splatter around us, nods. “We’ll talk by the pool.”
“That’s not an answer.” My voice is stronger now.
When he walks away, I have no choice but to follow.
As we head down the curved walkway toward the back of the house, I can tell he’s struggling to answer, likely because he’s worried that once he says the words, once he tells me that Cara is gone forever, I won’t be able to function.
Or answer his questions. I understand the process.
“Can you tell me what you heard when you were talking to your sister?” He stops by one of the high-top bar tables that line one side of the covered pool.
There are four of them, and each has a yellow and white striped umbrella popped open, annoyingly cheery against the gloom.
“Would you like to sit?” His voice is a calming rumble.
I imagine that’s good for witnesses and suspects.
From where we’re standing, I can see Ethan through the open French doors of the pool house/guest cottage. He’s sitting down on the edge of an ottoman, his head clutched in his hands. I look away because I can’t focus on his grief. Or mine.
I have to focus on the facts. For Cara.
I take a deep breath, glad the rain seems like it’s holding off for the moment. I want to do this out here, away from Ethan. “I heard someone enter the house. They have a system that chimes, lets everyone know when a door is opened. Then I heard three gunshots. One after the other.”
He has his pad out and is scribbling quickly. “Would you mind if I recorded this?”
“You can record anything.” Normally I would balk at the idea of someone recording me, but I want the cops to have as much detail as possible.
He pulls out a small recorder from his jacket pocket and places it on the glass tabletop but keeps his pad and pen out. “What happened next?”
“She was surprised by whoever it was, but not like it was a stranger. She said something like ‘Hey, what are you doing here’ but there wasn’t any fear in her voice. Until…” I swallow hard, force the words out. “Then she said ‘Oh my god!’ and there was gunfire. Three shots.”
I think I’ve already told him I heard three shots, but don’t care if I’m repeating myself.
I shake my head, trying to banish her words, the terror I heard in her voice. Her last moment. It will haunt me forever. “Then there was a lot of glass being broken. I don’t know what that was, but it seemed to go on forever.”
He pauses, his pen hovering over his pad. “You’re sure of what she said?”
“Yes. And it might even be recorded. I was flying today when she called and had my headset set to record ATC calls.”
His eyebrows lift slightly.
“I’ve got a YouTube channel where I post different aviation-related videos and clips.” It’s all part of my cover, but I enjoy it anyway. I rub at the back of my skull as a headache sets in, tiny little spikes digging in deep. The emotional numbness is there. A black void waiting to suck me in.
And I want it to. I don’t want to feel the pain I know is coming. The wound that will never heal. But I can’t let it suck me under, at least not yet.
“You’re a pilot?”
“I was flying my personal plane, just enjoying the clear skies.” I look up on instinct, past the edge of an umbrella toward the gray clouds rolling in, the sporadic drops of rain that hit the pool cover and patio around us. That flight seems like another lifetime ago.
“If you have it, I’ll want that recording.”
He asks more questions, most that seem benign, but I know what he’s doing. He wants to establish my alibi. Everyone close to Cara will be a suspect.
And that’s when it hits me. The glass breaking.
I should have realized it sooner. “Oh my god, whoever did this wanted to make it look like a robbery, didn’t they?
” I ask, interrupting his latest question.
“Is that why there was glass breaking? Did they…trash the place?” I should have realized this sooner, but everything is fuzzy and off-kilter.
I don’t even remember landing my plane, the drive here.
My memory is a big blank after… I swallow hard.
He pauses again, then nods, clearly having come to a decision to be honest. “It’s a possibility, yes. Whoever did this shattered a couple vases and drinking glasses. And it doesn’t look like there was a struggle, which coincides with what you’ve stated. That she was shot three times immediately.”
My head swims. “So there was no need to break things,” I whisper.
Someone staged this to cover their tracks.
Or attempted to. My gaze strays to Ethan, and I find him still in the same hunched-over position.
“And this neighborhood has so much security.” My gaze snaps to the detective’s again.
“What about the cameras here? They have them everywhere.”
His jaw tightens once. “It seems as if they were turned off, but we’re looking to see if there’s a backup. And we’re trying to get all the neighbors’ camera feeds if possible.”
He’s telling me more than I expect even as I deflate. The cameras were turned off? I find myself looking at Ethan again, narrowing my gaze. The percentage of women murdered by people close to them is ridiculously high.
The husband always did it. Words I’ve said more than once in the past roll around in my head. But I can’t believe Ethan would ever hurt Cara.
No way. My gut hits up against that, rejects the idea immediately. He loves her and she’s the mother of his kids. No. Just no. Realizing Detective Garcia has asked me something, I turn back to him. “What?”
“Any infidelity from your sister or brother-in-law?” His words and expression are carefully neutral as he watches me.
I blink, but I should have expected the question.
Swallowing hard, I shake my head. “No. Never from Cara. She’s not wired to cheat.
And I don’t think so from Ethan. He loves…
loved my sister.” Ethan might be a lot of things, but unfaithful isn’t one of them.
“But my sister was afraid of something. From work, I think. She said during our conversation that she found out something and was scared about it. I assume it has to do with work.”
He frowns slightly, but writes it down with the recorder still going. Another officer approaches and he turns away, murmurs something, but I catch the word “weapon.” My heart rate kicks up, but then he politely tells me that he’s “Sorry for your loss,” gives me his card, and leaves.
As he strides off with one of the officers, another one comes up and oh so politely tells me that I can’t stay here until the scene is released. I don’t see Ethan anymore, and even though I want to demand to see my sister, I know I can’t.
And deep down, I don’t want to see her like that. I don’t think I’d recover.
As I’m escorted down the winding driveway, I pass the medical examiner’s van and ice floods my system as reality sinks its talons into me, shreds my insides.
Cara is gone. Murdered in her own home by someone she knew. Her girls have lost their mom way too young. And for what? Why?
That is the question.
I intend to find out who did this and why.
And once I do, I will make them pay.