“I want to tell you it’s going to be okay, but I can’t do that right now,” Chloe said.

  “I know,” Danielle said into her ear. “And that’s okay. It’s not your job.”

  But Chloe disagreed. If she was going to pave her own way as an agent, what better way than breaking this case open—than rescuing her sister when it seemed there was an ironclad case against her?

  If she was going to be an agent worth a damn, maybe it was her job.

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  Of the two Fine sisters, Chloe was absolutely the more sentimental and emotional. But there comes a time when sentiment and emotion will only get you so far. It was very rare that they got results. It was this mindset that had Chloe leaving Riverside Correctional just fifteen minutes after she’d arrived. With tears still drying on the side of her face, she went back to HQ. She blasted right by her office and even neglected to check in with Greene. She went straight for the lab that was provided for the interns, just off of the primary lab for the field agents. Being a Saturday, it was very quiet in the lab, giving her the silence and space she needed to do her best thinking.

  She took the letters from Danielle’s apartment out of her laptop bag and started doing her best to come up with some sort of an answer. She used one of the basic evidence kits to study the letters and the envelopes closer. She had only ever done this once before in a real-life situation, helping to pull prints from a crowbar earlier in the year. Still, she’d gone through these motions more than a dozen times in the course of her training and was comfortable enough to be working it alone.

  She started off by carefully dusting them for prints. She dusted the letters themselves first and then the envelopes. The powder revealed several fingerprints, all of which could easily belong to Danielle. She scanned the prints and ran them through the system. As she waited for results—which could take anywhere from ten minutes to two hours—she looked over the letters again. Was there some sort of symbolism in them, maybe even clues as to the identity of the writer?

  She saw nothing that jumped out at her and decided it was just the deranged notes of someone with a very serious mental issue.

  She then pulled out her laptop and pulled up the digital files that had been accumulated so far for the murder of Martin Shields. She found fairly detailed reports, including photographs of the car, the lake area, and the body. She found herself drawn to the pictures that showed the stab wounds, completely unable to imagine Danielle viciously ramming a knife into someone’s chest.

  It seemed absolutely impossible to her.

  But she admitted to driving the car into the lake, she thought. Really, how much more of a mental leap is it between doing something like that and seriously considering the act of putting a knife in someone’s heart?

  “No,” she said into the empty room.

  Danielle didn’t do this. We may feel like strangers sometimes, but I know her, dammit.

  She handled the enveloped again, her hands secured in gloves. She checked the flaps and the sticker on the tapered edge of it. She looked at the underside of the flap, looking for any slight tears or gumming…any evidence that someone might have licked the envelope to close it. But she saw nothing of the sort. The writer had been careful there, too, using the sticker to close the envelope rather than providing a possible sample of their DNA by licking it.

  As she tidied the letters up into a neat pile, the results from the fingerprints came back. She read over the results, not at all surprised by them.

  The only prints on the envelopes and the letters were Danielle’s. Of course she’d handled them. There was no way in hell she’d ever think her fingerprints would be lifted off of it in relation to a murder investigation one day.

  Chloe let out a curse and slammed her hand down on the table. She was angry and frightened, two emotions that did not go well together. Not knowing what else to do and feeling very much like a kid who had gotten in over her head, she picked up her phone and placed a call to Greene.

  “Hey, Fine,” he said. “How’s your sister?”

  “Scared shitless,” Chloe said. “And with good reason. Agent Greene…I know you don’t know me very well at all but I need you to trust me. My sister did not do this. And I don’t know how to explain it to you other than a sister’s intuition. I know her. She didn’t do this.”

  “Then you need to prove it. I want you to think like an agent…like you’re no longer an intern but an actual field agent. If you wanted to prove her innocence, what’s the most surefire way to do it?”

  “I’d need to find something that links someone else to the scene,” she said. She was vaguely aware that Greene was currently about as strict as he had ever been with her—but still helpful. She wondered if he had formed his own opinions about Danielle and the case.

  “Good thinking. Now how would you do that?”

  “Well, I’d need to revisit the scene. But the car’s gone now. And by the time I get permission to look inside of it—assuming it’s already at the scrap yard—Danielle would probably be convicted. So…”

  She stopped, thinking. So what? What would the next step be?

  It came to her slowly and it truly did make her feel like she was a huge step beyond an intern. “Agent Greene, where are you right now?”

  “In town, about to interview a witness to a B and E. Why?”

  “How soon can you meet me at the morgue?”

  “And why would I want to do that?” Greene asked in a playfully mocking tone that let her know exactly why he’d want to do that.

  “Because I need to get a look at the body.”

  “Good work, Fine. And yes…I can meet you there in an hour.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  Chloe had been required to undergo what the students had referred to as “morgue time” during her second year of classes, mostly to get used to the idea of having to look over dead bodies for evidence and clues. It had been an uncomfortable experience, but it hadn’t really bothered her.

  What she discovered when she met Greene at the morgue to look over Martin’s body was that those classes were one thing—and being up close and personal with a freshly dead body—one she had recently met while still alive, at that—was a completely different situation. When she and Greene were granted access to the examination room, everything in the world seemed to go still and quiet. She looked over the body, completely nude and exposed to the halogen lights overhead.

  The stab wounds had been slightly cleaned but not yet completely tidied up. Chloe could now see the marks quite clearly. She was surprised how almost fake they seemed. But it was all too real…and she was going to have to get used to it.

  “Tell me what you’re looking for,” Greene said, clearly quizzing her.

  “Any signs of a struggle other than the stab wounds,” she said. “Bruising, abrasions, things like that.”

  “And why would those be of any interest to us?”

  “They’d be a very good source for fingerprints.”

  “Indeed. Remember that we also have his clothes being scoured for prints and hairs as well. So far, nothing.”

  Greene stood back and let her examine the body. The only thing out of the ordinary she could find was a small bruise between the neck and the base of the shoulder. It was the kind that could have come from anything, small and light.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking as you process,” Greene said. “Like if you were recording your notes.”

  “Nothing of interest right away,” she said. “Though the fact that the wounds are from the front indicates a bigger chance of there being a struggle. That being said, I’ve looked at the wrists and the backs of the hands for any sign of a fight. Seeing that there are none leads me to believe that the murderer was right there with him when it happened. I doubt the killer took him by surprise. Therefore, the killer was likely someone he trusted.”

  Someone like Danielle, she thought.

  She crossed her arms and gave it some more thought. “Of course, there could have still been a struggle, just a very bad one. But I’ve seen Martin move. He moves like someone with some training…perhaps a boxer or mixed martial artist. The headlock he put Steven into was a pro one. So perhaps he struck a defensive pose from his training to try to ward off an attack—but was just too late.”

  She leaned in and checked his hands again. She still saw nothing on them to indicate that he had been involved in a recent struggle. She did, however, find dirt beneath his fingernails. And it appeared to be fresh.

  “I’ve got some dirt under the fingernails here,” she said.

  She leaned in closer as Greene selected a drawer to his right and fished around inside. “We technically aren’t allowed to do this…” he said, but took something out of the drawer anyway. It was a simple scraping device, about the thickness of a sheet of thin cardboard but with the appearance of a scalpel.

  Chloe used this to scrape some of the dirt out from beneath Martin’s fingernails. It was tightly compacted but even from the few grains that fell onto the exam table, she could tell that there was also some blood mixed in with it.

  “Looks to be some blood mixed in with the dirt,” she said. “Could be his own, but if he tried to defend himself at all, it could also be the killer’s.”

  “Good work,” Greene said. “I’ll head out and get someone to bag this up. I’ll make it a priority and we should have results back from that blood within four to six hours.”

  The idea of it was exciting but she then realized that it could come back as Danielle’s blood. And if that were the case, she would have been working this entire time to do nothing more than solidify Danielle’s prison term.

  Apparently, this realization showed on her face. Greene paused at the door and hesitated. “You sure you don’t want to sit this one out?”

  “I’m sure. Even if…well, even if the results come back with bad news, at least I’ll know. And if it’s her then I have to know why. I have to understand.”

  “With all due respect,” Greene said, “that’s something you need to let go of. Because in my experience, it’s sometimes better that we don’t understand why people kill.”

  He left the room, leaving Chloe to ruminate on that. And even as she did, one solid certainty floated through her mind.

  It’s not Danielle. It can’t be…

  ***

  Chloe was back in the records room at HQ, going over the most recent report on the crime scene at the lake, when the door flew open. Two men walked inside, only one of whom she knew. Greene stood beside the other man, dwarfed by his size. The other man was tall and built like a pro wrestler, an attribute that was evident even beneath his suit. Chloe had seen him before and knew who he was, though she had never actually spoken with him.

  Director L.J. Johnson took a seat directly across from Chloe, leaving Greene to stand. Johnson looked across the table at her with an expression that was hard to read. He looked from Chloe to the records, and then back to Chloe.

  “I assume Agent Greene told you about our program to slowly allow some of our interns to get closer to the action, correct?” Johnson asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I stand by the decision but I will admit wholeheartedly that it irritated the eternal piss out of me when I discovered that you and Agent Greene had submitted another DNA test in this Martin Shields case. I called up Greene and chewed him out and fully planned to call you and ask who the hell you thought you were, too. After all, this isn’t even a bureau case. The locals out there near Pinecrest are doing me a favor because of your connection to the thing. So I was pissed. But then the results came back and I’ll be damned if I wasn’t proven wrong.”

  “It’s not Danielle Fine’s blood, is it?” Chloe asked.

  “No, it’s not. The results came back for a man named Alan Short. And that is information that we are keeping to ourselves. When I leave this room, I’m dedicating two agents to tracking this man down. I am then going to personally push the paperwork that will lead to your sister’s release. However…you have to be realistic about this. She is still a suspect until Alan Short is caught. She is still not to leave the state and must agree to further questioning.”

  “Of course,” Chloe said. “Thank you.”

  “No, thank you. Impressive work, Fine. I look forward to working with you when you’re no longer an intern. Agent Greene, keep up the good work on working with her.”

  With that, Johnson got to his feet and left the room. Greene gave Chloe a can-you-believe-that sort of look.

  “One thing I noticed,” Chloe said, “was that he’s assigned other agents to bring this guy in. I feel like I’ve been demoted.”

  “Hey, you can’t expect the entire world. Seriously…the fact that he came in to congratulate you is huge. So take that and your sister’s presumed innocence as a victory. I’ll keep you posted on progress in the Alan Short investigation. If he’s a local, I imagine we’ll have him in custody within forty-eight hours.”

  “That’s great,” Chloe said, feeling the weight come off of her chest right away.

  “You know, she will probably be charged with something. Ditching his car like that seems highly suspect. She’s off for now…but I fully expect that there will be an ongoing investigation.”

  “That makes sense,” Chloe said, still simply relieved that Danielle was no longer the primary suspect. “So now what do we do?”

  “For this case? Nothing. You’ve done everything you could. I think maybe you should call it a day and head home. When Danielle is released, I imagine your days will be rather hectic. Like Director Johnson said…we’re sitting on this for right now. Which means the media won’t know anything substantial until Alan Short is caught.”

  “Can I tell Danielle the news?”

  “Not yet. We have to wait until the paperwork is done. But if Director Johnson is on it, that will be done very soon. Seriously, Chloe. Go home. Good work today.”

  She got up from the table and tidied up the records she had been looking through. She was visibly trembling as she tried to absorb everything that had happened during the course of the day—most notably the last five minutes or so.

  She’d potentially freed Danielle.

  She had Director Johnson—a man who would eventually be her supervisor—already thanking her and congratulating her.

  It looked like the future was bright. It looked like the dark past that has pushed her toward these moments was finally releasing her from its clutches.

  But as she’d soon discover, the past had a way of sticking around and not only surprising you, but shaking any future plans into dust. It was proven in the form of the letters that had been delivered to Danielle, hinting that the past was never too far away.

  But who sent them? Chloe wondered, the questioning itching at her. And perhaps more importantly, why?

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  Despite the tension that existed between them ever since the block party, Chloe and Steven had managed to remain civil. Chloe was still excited and pleased over the fact that her insights and work—with Greene’s guidance—had helped to clear Danielle’s name. She was so excited about it that when she found Steven on the couch, looking over his emails, she had every intention of jumping him. They’d not been physical for about a week—which seemed a shame since they had an entire house to break in.

  That all came to a very cold stop when she arrived home and tried to share her news with him. She felt a little silly as she did it, beaming and feeling as if she was bragging. She started with finding the blood under Martin’s fingernails and then the brief meeting with Director Johnson. But even before she told him the full details of Danielle’s eventual release, it was clear that he wasn’t going to be sharing in her joy.

  “Hold on,” Steven said. There appeared to be equal measures of fascination and disgust on his face. “You mean to tell me that you were right there, in the room with Martin’s corpse?”

  “Yes. I told you…I’m part of an experimental program that gives interns more freedom and responsibilities.”

  “Yes, I know that,” he spat. “But you were right there with the body…and you had no problem still defending her?”

  “No, I didn’t,” she said, instantly getting defensive. “No matter your feelings about Danielle, even your contempt can’t overrule DNA evidence. Sorry her freedom is going to screw with your mom’s perfect image for our wedding.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to. It’s been on your mind since the first time your mother complained about her.”

  “Chloe, that’s not fair…or accurate.”

  “Well, that’s good to know. Because when she is released tomorrow, she can’t go back to her apartment. It’s too risky and there will be media everywhere. So I want her to come back here for a few days.”

  “What?” Steven asked, incredulous. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “No. What would be your problem with it?” She knew she had an argument on her hands now but she was digging her heels in. She wasn’t worried about what Sally Brennan thought anymore. This was her sister’s future on the line now. Sally could take her wedding money and shove it for all Chloe cared.

  “There would be a convicted murderer in our house!”

  “No…not convicted. Did you miss the part where I said she was being released?”

  “And you think that matters?” Steven asked, yelling now. “Freed or not, this will stick with her. For years—maybe even her whole life.”

  “And how does that affect you, exactly?”

  “Chloe…you’re not thinking clearly. I get it. She’s your sister. But she can’t stay here.”

  “Well, she is staying here. I’m sorry but it’s not open for discussion.”

  He looked at her as if he had no idea who he was speaking with. And what pissed her off more than anything was that she knew he was worried what his parents would think. That was the only reason he was being so stubborn.

 

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