Cavanaugh's Surrender. Marie Ferrarella

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      “So in other words, she didn’t give you any details about who she was seeing because she didn’t want you to be judgmental,” Logan concluded succinctly.

      She nodded, wishing with all her heart that she hadn’t come down as hard on Paula over the last one as she had. Not that he didn’t deserve every insulting adjective she had hurled at his memory. Slick, charming, with a Southern drawl, Bo Wilkins had managed to deplete half of Paula’s bank account—granted, that didn’t exactly amount to a king’s ransom, but it was still Paula’s money—before just vanishing off the face of the earth.

      She’d begged Paula to let her know the next time she gave away her heart, because she’d said she intended to run a check on whomever the next Romeo was. If no prior arrests came up, then at least her sister would have a fighting chance of keeping the fillings in her teeth.

      Paula hadn’t found that funny, she recalled. And she deliberately hadn’t said anything about meeting someone new—until she’d been pinned down.

      That was when Paula had told her that she didn’t want to say anything yet because she didn’t want to jinx the relationship. And, if it became serious, then she would say something.

      Given that, Destiny had seen no reason to push.

      But apparently, it had been serious. Which meant that Paula had lied to her, Destiny realized with a sharp pang. It obviously had to have been serious if Paula had been despondent enough to text that message to her.

      If she texted that message, a little voice in Destiny’s head whispered.

      Her eyes widened as the thought sank in.

      What if Paula hadn’t even been the one to text that message? What if her killer had? The same killer who had botched the appearance of a suicide by slashing her wrists upside down.

      Trying not to get ahead of herself, she turned toward Sean. “We have to process her cell phone for any fingerprints on the keypad that aren’t hers. The guy probably wore gloves, but maybe he got careless….”

      Destiny’s voice trailed off as she made eye contact with her supervisor. He wasn’t saying anything, just letting her talk, but she could see by the expression on his face that he was already way ahead of her. He always seemed to be two steps ahead of everyone.

      “You already thought of that,” she said, nodding her head.

      “We’re on the same page,” Sean told her kindly. “Same page that Logan’s on,” he said, nodding toward his son.

      Feeling anxious and yet dull-witted at the same time, an area she had never inhabited before, Destiny turned toward the detective, curious why he wasn’t saying anything.

      The answer to that was simple. Because he wasn’t standing there anymore.

      “Cavanaugh?” she called, raising her voice.

      “In here,” Logan answered, his voice floating back to her from the back of the apartment.

      Apparently a thought had occurred to him and he’d gone back into the bedroom to look at something, or for something.

      Actually, the man had gone back to the bathroom, Destiny realized as she followed the sound of the detective’s deep voice.

      As she entered the bedroom, she had to shift to one side. The medical examiner’s team had slipped Paula’s body into that one-size-fits-all black body bag and was now wheeling her sister back out. Once outside the building, they’d put her into the coroner’s van they’d driven over here.

      Paula didn’t like the color black, Destiny recalled with a pang. It was the only color missing from her meticulously arranged wardrobe.

       “Black is the color of death, Destiny. I don’t want it anywhere near me.”

      It is now, pumpkin. It is now, Destiny thought, feeling her heart twist inside of her.

      Walking into the bathroom, painfully aware that her sister was no longer here—no longer anywhere—she found Logan standing before the medicine cabinet. The door was open and the detective was peering at the shelves. He was obviously taking inventory of what was inside. She didn’t exactly care for the thoughtful frown she saw on his face.

       Now what?

      Bracing herself, thinking that she would have to defend her sister again, Destiny forced herself to ask, “What?”

      Logan read the generic name imprinted on the container’s label again. This put a crimp in the woman’s theory. He held the container up so that she could see it, as well.

      “This was just filled,” he told her.

      She had no idea what “this” was but had a feeling she wouldn’t be happy once she heard the answer.

      Even so, though she knew Logan had to do it, she resented this man’s prying into her sister’s life. And, by proxy, into her life. Resented the lack of understanding and compassion in his voice.

      Granted, as a good detective, he was supposed to be impartial, but keeping this kind of a distance between himself and the victim didn’t help him understand the kind of person her sister had been. Didn’t make him fiercely want to solve this tragic crime because the world was that much the lesser for the loss of her.

      Taking yet another breath, Destiny was satisfied that her voice wouldn’t crack. Only then did she finally answer him. “Yes, so?”

      Still holding the bottle up, he shook it. Hard. There was no sound to correspond with the movement, no pills being disturbed and forced to rattle around the small container.

      “So it’s empty,” he pointed out needlessly. “According to the date it was filled, there should be approximately twenty-five pills in here. There aren’t.” He looked at her. “What do you want to bet that toxicology is going to find that those pills are in your sister’s system? Her wrists didn’t need to be slashed,” he told her. “Your sister swallowed enough of these things to have killed a small horse.”

      “Or was forced to swallow,” Destiny interjected. She wasn’t going to let him just forget about what his father had pointed out. Evidence that pointed to her sister being murdered.

      “There’s no sign of a struggle, remember? Maybe, before the full effects of the pills kicked in, your sister actually did try to slash her wrists but she was so loopy from the pills that she did an awkward, botched job of it.”

      Taking the vial from him, Destiny turned the container around so she could read the label. When she did, the name of the drug was vaguely familiar. Her sister was taking prescription sleeping pills, one of the newer ones on the market.

      “Ever since we were little, my sister has had trouble sleeping. When these came on the market—” she nodded at the empty container “—and she tried them, she was overjoyed. She’d finally found something that worked. But she never took more than the prescribed dosage,” Destiny maintained firmly. “It wasn’t because she was a saint,” she added angrily, reading the skepticism in Logan’s eyes. “She just didn’t want to feel drugged СКАЧАТЬ