Chapter 1 #2
Despite the years of silence, the teenage disagreements, the favoritism her parents showed Allison, Noelle loved her sister.
Allison had been her only family since their parents’ deaths—if you didn’t count her cold and cruel Aunt Jean and Uncle Clyde, whom Noelle didn’t.
Her mother’s sister and brother-in-law had never accepted Noelle’s adoption, never considered her real family.
Especially after Allison, a daughter by birth, had come along.
Noelle, being Korean-American, had been ostracized by her mother’s family, not just because of her race, but because they felt Noelle’s parents had been too hasty in adopting, too eager to have a child and had settled for Noelle too easily.
Settled. Damn that word still stung. Settled reeked of second best, of last resort and not good enough.
Noelle wiped the silent tears that rolled down her face.
She’d lived with the stigma of being the lesser daughter, her parents’ bad decision, from the day Allison was born.
From age ten until she’d left Alaska in her rearview mirror to attend college, Noelle had felt like an outsider in her own family.
Or, as she’d overheard her parents call her one night when she was fourteen, the mistake.
So why was she going back to Alaska? Back to the hostile environment where she’d always felt so unwelcome and unwanted?
Noelle dragged herself back to the couch and flopped down on it.
She leaned her head back and groaned. She was going back because it wasn’t Allison’s fault she’d been born.
Allison might have been spoiled and held in higher esteem by the family, but she’d been an okay sister.
Though Allison was not close in age or much of a friend, Noelle had loved her just the same.
And Noelle was going back to Alaska because it wasn’t Allison’s fault she’d been murdered. Allison deserved to have a proper burial and to have her only sister there to grieve her death.
More important, Allison deserved to have her killer caught and punished. Rising from the couch, Noelle firmed her resolve. Before she left Alaska again, she intended to see that Allison had justice.
Shelby, Alaska
After disconnecting the call with Noelle, Eli sat in his ABI office, fingers steepled and tapping his chin.
He replayed the call, the sound of her voice and what wasn’t said but plainly heard in the silences.
Her flat refusal of his offer to help, saying she didn’t need him, had cut him deeply and salted old sores.
But he shouldn’t have lost his cool, shouldn’t have snarled at her the way he had.
I got that message a long time ago.
Eli winced at the memory of his harsh tone. Not the professional presentation he’d intended when he started the call. Maybe if she’d had even a morsel of warmth in her voice, sounded even a little bit happy to hear from him—
Happy? When he was giving her tragic news about her sister?
Come on, Colton. Get real. The message was as clear now as it had been thirteen years ago.
He’d always cared more for her than she had for him.
How else could she have walked away from their relationship and cut off contact without a backward glance?
He’d never understood her reasons for the breakup, but he had been left without any recourse.
When Noelle left him, she was just…gone.
She never took his calls again, never replied to texts, never explained herself.
And he’d never gotten over her. His love had been deep and true, and her departure wounded him, heart and soul.
“What’s with you?” His partner, Asher Rafferty, strolled into their shared office. Rafferty brought both the clinging chill of the November day on his clothes and a cup of steaming coffee in his hand. “You look like you just lost your best friend.”
Eli straightened in his chair and lowered his hands to his desktop. “Close.”
Asher did a double take. “Dang. I was kidding, but…what’s going on?”
“I just talked to Allison Harris’s sister. I let her know we identified Allison as one of the Fiancée Killer’s victims.” He picked up a pen and tapped it on the file open on his desk.
“You made the next of kin notification by phone?”
“I made sure someone from Seattle PD was there with her. But I needed to be the one to break the news to her.”
“Why? You didn’t do the notification for any of the other victims’ families.”
“Because I know her. I was…involved with her in college. I wanted to be the one… If she found out I’m working the case and hadn’t… I thought I owed her…”
“Because it was an excuse to talk to her again?” Asher asked, proving he was too perceptive to be convinced otherwise.
Eli rubbed the back of his neck and arched a dark brown eyebrow.
“Maybe so. But isn’t it better she knows I’m working the case before she gets here?
Can you imagine if we meet by chance in the hall at the coroner’s office or she reads my name in a newspaper article regarding the case?
I don’t want her to think I’m avoiding her. ”
“So she’s coming up here?”
Eli nodded. “To claim the body and make the funeral arrangements.”
“And you plan to see her? Even seek her out?” Asher asked, propping his feet on his desk.
“I, uh, guess I’ll leave that up to fate. I don’t plan to avoid her. If we run into each other…” Eli waved a hand, not knowing how to finish that sentence. What would he do if he saw Noelle while she was in town? His heart squeezed at the prospect.
“Yeah?” Asher prompted.
Eli bent over the file in front of him and flipped through the pages of notes. “Well, I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”
Two days later, when Eli stepped into the lobby of the medical examiner’s office from the parking lot, he reached that bridge.