My Sister, Myself

If she left right now, she’d lose whatever modicum of control she had by virtue of apparently being the first person on scene. Alone she could search the rubble for more photos. She could get a sense of Katie’s life. And that’s why she’d come, that’s why she’d been drawn here. If she left, she might never be welcomed back.

She stepped inside and waited a second. The place had the feel of emptiness. Whatever had happened here was over.

Decision made, she closed the door behind her, noticing for the first time that the door frame was splintered where the lock had been broken. Stifling a renewed trickle of alarm, she made her way to a pile of books in front of built-in shelves. Maybe in that jumble she’d find a photo album. She’d search fast and get out.

She’d barely begun digging through the chaos when she heard a noise in the hall like approaching footsteps. In a blink, without thinking, she stumbled over the debris and hit the light switch, plunging the room back into darkness. She expected to hear voices, keys, a dog, the sounds of a close-by apartment door opening and shutting. But though she strained to hear a nice, ordinary, unscary sound that signaled someone benign, she heard…nothing.

She backed deeper into the room, stepping over glass and shattered pottery, overturned plants and clothing, her own noises in the dark sounding more like an elephant stampede than a furtive retreat. A tingling in her scalp let her know that for some reason she was afraid.

The sound in the hall stopped. Tess stood absolutely still for what seemed a century.

Finally she took a deep breath. Nerves had gotten the best of her. Spying definitely wasn’t in her future.

The steps started again, closer this time. They sounded stealthy. Surely another door would open and close as a neighbor came home.

The footsteps stopped outside Katie’s door.

Heart racing, Tess hugged the wall and backed into the bedroom, feeling her way, grateful there were few wall ornaments on which to bump her head. Stumbling over rubble, she found the bedroom closet, slipped inside and tugged the door. It was stuck open. She flattened herself between hanging clothes and the wall.

Footfalls came from inside the apartment. A tinkle of glass. A muffled oath. Her heart beat like a jungle drum, crashed against her ribs like a bumper car.

The bedroom light came on suddenly, the clothes in front of her jerked aside. Tess threw up an arm to cover her eyes.

A hand closed on her wrist and pulled it down.

She found herself staring into the barrel of a gun.

Chapter Three

“Tess, it’s okay, it’s me,” Ryan Hill said.

She threw herself against Ryan’s chest, melted against him in a heap, cried despite the relief or maybe because of it. He held her and soothed her, the gun still in his right hand, his left patting her back.

“You scared me!” she finally said, pushing herself away.

“I know. I’m sorry,” he said. “Are you okay? Were you here when the place was turned upside down? Did anyone hurt you?”

He pulled her toward him as he said these things, and she shook her head, tears rolling down her cheeks, glad when her head hit his chest again.

His leather jacket was cool and smooth against her cheek, but the man beneath was rock hard and warm. In the moment he’d looked at her, she’d seen his gray eyes flood with concern, his stern expression soften. His breath ruffled her hair, whispered by her forehead, and she closed her eyes. She said, “I wasn’t here. I came afterward.”

“Let me get this straight,” he said with an edge to his voice. “You came into this apartment knowing it had been ransacked?”

Her eyes popped open. She didn’t like that edge, probably, she admitted to herself, because she’d more or less earned it. Still, this man wasn’t her keeper, and the out-of-place attraction she’d been fighting a moment before fled in a wave of irritation as she shrugged herself free from his one-handed grip.

As she searched the room for something on which to dry her tears, she said, “I knew the intruder was gone.” It amazed her that her voice sounded so strong. By all rights, it should be as shaky as her knees.

“How did you know?”

“It felt empty,” she said, spying a tissue box next to the overturned mattress. She climbed over the tangled knot of a pink quilt and snagged the box. Mopping at her face, she looked around the trashed room.

He shook his head as he slipped his gun back into the shoulder holster he wore under his jacket. “It felt empty?”

“Let it go,” she said, eyes flashing.

He stared at her.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

“You weren’t at the hospital when I called. I asked myself where I’d go if I were you, and this is what I came up with.”

“And scared me nearly to death!” she repeated, but it wasn’t the fear that rankled, it was the humiliation of having broken down in front of him. She was willing to do almost anything now to distance herself from that clinging vine, that needy, weepy thing she’d become in the aftermath of intense fear. Anything was better than that.

“Well, no harm done,” she said briskly.

“That’s right,” he said, a wicked gleam igniting his eyes, “no harm done. Except that I might have been the bad guy back for a second look.”

Tess stared at her feet. She knew he was right, but she wasn’t going to let him see that. He’d already seen too much. She said, “I’m going to clean up this place. I don’t want Katie coming home to something like this. Maybe I’ll figure out what’s missing.”

He regarded her with raised eyebrows. “How in the world will you know what’s missing in an apartment you’ve never been in before?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” she answered. But she would know. She just wasn’t going to try to explain something to him she couldn’t explain to herself. It was like knowing Katie wouldn’t so easily quit trying to figure out who framed their father or that she lived on the second floor of this building. She just knew.

“Well it’s immaterial, anyway,” he said, taking out his cell phone. “You can’t do anything in here until the scene is processed. So find someplace to sit down, and try not to touch anything else, okay?”

She glared at him.

“Please,” he added.

Of course it had to be processed. “I’ll go sit on what’s left of the big recliner,” she said.

He nodded as he spoke into the phone.

RYAN ASKED EVERYONE who answered their door if they’d seen anyone or anything suspicious in the past thirty-six hours, since Katie Fields had been hit by that white van.

No one had ever heard of Katie Fields. No one there knew the name of the tenant in 206. The manager would know, but he was off in Hawaii.

The woman with the dog confessed she played music almost continually to cover the noise of her almost-deaf neighbor’s television. She did mention Frances from downstairs, who knew everybody and everything but who worked nights. The old grouch across from the elevator said, “I ain’t a snoop like some people.”

One person wasn’t home, and the last one, the elderly lady with a hearing problem, admitted she had no idea who lived, “down at that end of the hall.”

That was the trouble. Katie’s apartment was the last one on the left. The unit across from hers was empty, the lady with the dog told him, and had been for weeks. The unit under hers belonged to the vacationing manager.

Ryan’s partner and a couple of guys from the lab were finishing looking through Katie’s apartment, but it was such a low priority that it was more or less being done because Ryan had asked. He didn’t expect the person who’d done this to have left fingerprints or telltale hairs.

Which, he decided as he leaned against the wall in the hall, was just as well. He didn’t want to get warned away from looking into Katie Fields’s mishap. He wanted it to remain a hit-and-run and not get bumped up to attempted murder or linked to her father’s death.

Jason came out and lit a cigarette, something he did more or less every ten minutes when possible. He was younger than Ryan by a year or two, chatty and full of himself, as different from Matt Fields as night is from day.