Gallagher Justice

She shrugged. “I hate gossip, but maybe it’s best that you did bring it to my attention. It’s always a good idea to know what people are saying about you behind your back. But just for the record? I’m not involved with Guy Hardison. On any level. I want you to know that. I want you to believe that.”

“Maybe you’re not involved, but—”

“Milo.” Her tone held a warning note. “There is nothing going on between Guy Hardison and me. Period.”

He nodded. “Okay. I get the message. Case closed. I’ll see you in a few hours.”

They said their good-nights, and then Fiona ran up the front steps and inserted her key into the lock. She couldn’t wait to be inside her own apartment, to lock the door behind her and close herself off from the rest of the world, if only for the next few hours.

Resolving herself to the work she’d left earlier, she went into her tiny kitchen to brew a fresh pot of coffee. But instead, she climbed up on the counter and reached into the far corner of a top cabinet to retrieve the bottle of scotch she’d stashed several months ago when she’d quit drinking.

She stared at the bottle for a moment, then got out a glass and poured herself a drink. Her grandmother’s voice seemed to echo through the silent apartment. “You drink alone, you’re apt to die alone, Fiona Colleen.”

“Sorry, Gran,” she muttered. But dying alone was pretty much a foregone conclusion for her anyway.

Fiona downed the whiskey sitting on the edge of the counter, then poured herself another. The liquor seared a comforting path all the way to her stomach, and she closed her eyes, letting the familiar numbness take hold.

Hopping off the counter, she carried the bottle and the glass into the other room and dropped into a chair at the dining table. Sipping her drink, she read over the notes she’d made earlier.

One out of three women in this country will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. One out of every three.

She finished her drink, then began to write.

It could happen to me, it could happen to you, it could happen to anyone at any time.

She stared at the words and frowned. Had Alicia been sexually assaulted? Was that the reason she’d been murdered?

They would have to wait for the autopsy to find out, and even then the results, except in the more brutal cases, could be ambiguous.

However, the way she’d been murdered, one shot to the back of the head, suggested—as Guy had said earlier—an execution-style hit. Very deliberate, premeditated, someone wanting to shut her up. But why? What could an eighteen-year-old girl who’d lived a very sheltered and protected existence know that would make someone want to kill her? What might she have seen? Who might she have seen?

And where the hell was Lexi?

The questions swirled inside Fiona’s brain, and she rubbed her temples, trying to shut them out so that she could concentrate on her work. She poured herself another drink and scribbled:

Think of three women in your own life. Your mother, your daughter, your sister...

As she stared at what she’d written, Lori Guest’s words suddenly came back to her.

“They have that twin thing, Fiona. Where one goes, the other goes. When one is upset, the other is upset. If one gets hurt, well, you get the idea. They’re so attuned to one another, it’s almost scary.”

Had Lexi sensed that Alicia was in trouble? Had she felt her sister’s terror?

Did she know the exact moment when the bullet had pierced her sister’s skull?

Or was Lexi...beyond knowing?

“Why did you call me, Alicia?” Fiona wondered aloud. “And why in God’s name didn’t I call you back?”

Don’t dwell on it. Nothing could be done about it now. Recriminations could come later, but for now, the only productive thing Fiona could do was concentrate on her work.

She glanced back down at her notes, tried to pull her thoughts together once again, but her mind kept rambling and the words on the page blurred. Her eyes suddenly burned with exhaustion, and Fiona thought that if she could just rest them for a moment, she’d be good to go.

But the moment she closed her eyes, she drifted off and the image of Alicia’s pale, still features materialized in her dream. Mist swirled around the body as Fiona stared down at her, and somewhere in the darkness behind her, a tape played over and over. “Fiona? This is Alicia Mercer. Please call me when you get this message. I really need to talk to you.”

And then suddenly the tape stopped. The fog faded, and Fiona was standing on a lonely road in the harsh glare of headlights as she stared down at David Mackenzie’s lifeless body. Someone said in horror, “He’s dead, Fiona. My God, you killed him.”

She came awake with a start, the ringing of the telephone as jarring in the early morning hours as a scream. Glancing around, Fiona tried to orient herself, and when the sound persisted, she finally got up to answer it. Finding herself not quite steady on her feet, she put a hand on the table for balance.

Carefully she walked across the room to the sofa where she’d tossed the cordless phone earlier. Halfway there, she realized it wasn’t the phone ringing, but the doorbell.

She adjusted course and moved very deliberately to the door to glance through the peephole. Detective Doggett stood on the other side. She undid the dead bolts and drew back the door to let him in.

He walked inside and glanced back at all the locks. “How many of those things you got on there?”

Not enough. Fiona pulled fingers through her messy hair as she closed the door, then turning, she caught her breath when she found him standing right behind her. His eyes...those laser blue eyes...were staring at her intently. And he was frowning. Fiona had the vague notion that he was scowling at her in disapproval.

Not a comfortable revelation for any woman.

“Sorry to drop by like this,” he said. “But I told you I’d be in touch as soon as I heard something.”

Fiona had made sure he had her home phone number before they left the crime scene, expecting that he would simply call when he had news. But here he was, alive and in person, and she realized that he must have looked up her address in the cross directory. She wondered if she should be annoyed at his presumption. Maybe when she was thinking a little more clearly she would be.

She felt dizzy, all of a sudden, and put a hand to her forehead.

“Hey, you okay?” Doggett asked her.

“I’m fine.” But her words sounded slurred even to her.

“Maybe we’d better sit down. You don’t look too steady on your feet.”

“No, I told you I’m fine—” But Fiona was horrified to feel herself sway. She put out a hand to stop the room from spinning, but there was nothing to grab hold of. “I think I’m going to—”

The next thing she knew, she was lying on the sofa, staring up at the ceiling. Doggett was standing over her. Still scowling. Still disapproving.

“I’m all right,” she muttered. “I just felt a little woozy.” So woozy, in fact, she couldn’t quite remember having gotten from the door to the sofa.

“You fainted,” Doggett said. “Or maybe I should say, you passed out.”

Disgust in his voice. Not a good sign. Fiona gritted her teeth and sat up. “I couldn’t have. I didn’t have that much to drink.”

“You had enough to knock you on your butt. Is that the norm for you? You come home from a crime scene at four o’clock in the morning and start drinking?” His expression was so grim that Fiona thought if he’d had a rolled up newspaper, he probably would have bopped her on the nose with it. She had the sudden urge to tuck her tail between her legs and slink off to the nearest corner.

“I didn’t get home until four-thirty,” she said coolly as if that made any kind of difference whatsoever. Humiliation always made her irreverent...irrelevant...shit. “And if I want to have a drink in the privacy of my own home, I don’t see how that’s your business.”

“I’ll tell you how it’s my business. You’re the prosecutor assigned to my case. I don’t want a bad guy slipping through the cracks because you weren’t up to the job.”

“You don’t have to worry about me,” Fiona assured him, wishing she didn’t feel as if she might throw up at any moment. Barfing on Doggett’s shoes would definitely undermine her credibility. “I know how to do my job. You just make sure the bad guy doesn’t slip through the cracks because you or some other detective in your division decides to ride roughshod over his rights.”