The Taken. Vicki Pettersson

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      Grif hadn’t looked too closely at the placement of Rockwell’s wounds, but the coroner’s notes showed Craig’s deepest, deadliest cuts would be precise and controlled, no breaks in the incisions, no hesitation on the killer’s part as he stole her life. So Craig’s murderer wasn’t just skilled with a knife, he’d probably killed even before Rockwell. Could he be ex-military? A hired killer? A butcher?

       You are not a P.I. anymore. You’re not even human!

      Grif gave Sarge’s voice a mental shove and kept reading, saw that there were no lacerations on the finger or hands, meaning Craig would succumb easily to attack. So maybe it’ll be fast then, Grif thought, then caught himself. How pansy was it that he didn’t know if he wanted that more for her or for himself?

      Facts, Grif thought, as he started to sweat. He needed bricks. Reason and instinct. Mortar. He needed a wall if he was going to get through this.

      I need the Everlast, he thought desperately, reaching for his coffee. But as he lifted the cup, one last word on the autopsy report caught his attention, and the cosmic freeze he’d felt when relearning how to breathe wrapped its cold fingers around his throat again.

      Rape.

      So not like Nicole Rockwell, after all.

      The grease and coffee rebelled in his new stomach, and Grif bumped the table as he rose. Throwing too many bills onto the tabletop, he then stumbled out into the crisp, bright morning, the last of Katherine Craig’s life. He immediately turned his gaze directly into the fiery sun. How?

      How did Sarge expect him to do this? How was he supposed to watch a killer, a rapist, come to this smiling woman’s home, and do nothing to stop it?

      Take away a Centurion’s wings, and all they’re left with is an intimate acquaintance with death.

      “I can’t,” he said aloud, earning a look from a bleary-eyed woman just stepping from her room. Not a hint of plasma around her, he noted, panicking.

      How the hell was this supposed to help him heal, he wondered, as a crow cawed above him. Grif covered his ears, wincing. The animal was circling for the kill. Grif’s death senses caught that.

      “Where’s your infamous mercy?” he rasped, stumbling out of the lot and onto Boulder Highway, away from the crow, the half-dressed woman now watching him suspiciously … toward another who wouldn’t see him at all. And still, there was no answer from on high.

      In this question, it seemed, there never was.

      Craig.”

      Kit hadn’t been in her office more than five minutes before her doorway fell dark. Her boss’s tone had Kit glancing up with guilt, but Marin Wilson returned her pale-faced stare with eyes that were grim as well as sharp. Studying Kit’s atypically rumpled appearance, she allowed silence to sit between them before gesturing to her office with a jerk of her head.

      Kit sighed and stood, ignoring the stares from the main press room, Marin’s wake a defensive wall between her and their unspoken questions. When they reached Marin’s office, Kit shut the door behind her without being asked, took a seat, and waited.

      Marin dropped into an ergonomic chair on the other side of a desk so loaded with papers it belonged on Hoarders. She ran a hand through short, spiky hair, newly silver, a side effect of chemo. She didn’t care. Marin disdained pretense of any kind. She’d rather apply pressure than lipstick, and found Kit and Nicole’s love for fashion so bewildering she often studied them like they were exotic animals at the zoo.

      The look she gave Kit now was less baffled, but also a delay tactic. Marin believed most people found silence intolerable, a theory neatly backed up by the existence of tell-alls, the Kardashians, and Twitter. But when Kit only stared back, Marin broke the silence with a sigh. “Time off.”

      “No.”

      Marin’s nostrils flared. “Ms. Craig. One of our reporters has been murdered while pursuing a story. You need to trust that every person at this newspaper is going to do their best to discover how and why. Rockwell was one of our own. We’ll take care of it.”

      “I want to do it myself.”

      “You’re not a police officer.”

      And there, in Marin’s infamously caustic subtext, was the censure Kit had been dreading. She and Nic had pursued a story without a direct assignment from on high, proof that Kit was irresponsible, in over her head, and incapable of seeing this story—this tragedy—through to the end. Kit fought back tears. “No, but I’m the daughter of one.”

      “Kit.” Seeing the tears, Marin softened. But not much. “Go home.”

      “Auntie.”

      Marin rolled her eyes. “Stop. You only pull that ‘Auntie’ crap when you’re trying to weasel out of something. Just like—”

      “Don’t. Don’t make this about my mother.” She spoke sharply, but if anyone knew why, it was Marin. In ways, they both lived in Shirley Craig’s shadow. But Kit wasn’t going to get into that now.

      Leaning back, Marin folded her arms. “What do you have?”

      “A list of names.” Kit handed her the sheet she’d just printed, then told her about the anonymous contact. Marin’s expression narrowed further, and Kit rushed on. “I was writing my account of Nicole’s … of the crime scene when you came in. The lock on the motel door wasn’t damaged. The killer was already in the room. He had a key, maybe a contact at the motel, or the simple ability to pick locks. I don’t know.”

      “But you think the person who killed Rockwell is on this list?”

      “Would she be dead otherwise?”

      Marin tapped her chin. “What else were you two working on?”

      Kit shrugged. “She was helping John with a photo essay on the homeless living in the underground tunnels. I just finished an op-ed piece on the city’s backlog of rape kits, not exactly breaking news. There was a lifestyle piece on a new gallery opening downtown.”

      Marin squinted.

      “I swear. That’s all. I mean, the gallery’s devoted to nudes painted in neon and wearing animal heads, but I don’t see anyone killing for that.”

      Her aunt looked at the list, gaze snagging and widening on the last few names. She finally put it down, where it disappeared in the sea of papers. “You’re going to run this entire newspaper someday, Katherine.”

      Now it was Kit’s turn to squint. “You only pull that ‘Katherine’ crap when you want something. And I told you before. Changing the world is more important to me than running it.”

      Marin sighed. “And now you sound like your father.”

      She did—because her mother might have taught her how to live, even while dying, but it was her father who’d taught Kit what to do—right up until the very last breath.

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