Colton Copycat Killer. Marie Ferrarella

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СКАЧАТЬ the key word and making it all sound almost like an accusation.

      It only caused Zoe to look even more bewildered and at a loss.

      “I don’t know. I can’t remember,” she cried. “Everything’s just a huge blur.”

      And the fact that it was, frustrated her beyond words. She would have raked through her brain with her fingernails if that would have somehow helped bring the missing details back into focus.

      With Ethan looking on, Sam tried another approach. “All right, why did you walk out in the first place?” he asked.

      She looked at him, stricken. How could she tell him what he wanted to know, knowing it would only humiliate him, embarrass him? Hurt him?

      She would rather die herself than do that to him, especially at a time like this.

      Dead or not, Zoe concluded, Celia didn’t deserve a man like Sam.

      “Zoe, why did you walk out?” Sam repeated more forcefully when she didn’t answer him.

      “We had an argument,” she finally answered in a low, quiet voice.

      “About what?” he pressed.

      “Nothing important,” Zoe told him, waving the subject away as fresh tears threatened to choke her for a second time.

      Ethan attempted to step in again. “Sam, her only sister’s just been murdered. She’s clearly in shock. She should see a doctor, not be interrogated right now. And yes, I know I have nothing professional to fall back on like Ridge or Annabel, or Chris—or even Trevor,” he said, mentioning their other siblings, all of whom, unlike him, were in some branch of law enforcement. “But maybe you shouldn’t be the one investigating this murder to begin with.”

      Sam gave him a look that most of the law enforcement agents in Granite Gulch had learned to steer clear of. “My town, my case.”

      “Your fiancée,” Ethan countered.

      Sam completely ignored the last detail. Instead, he looked at Ethan pointedly. “Did you happen to notice the mark on her forehead?”

      Ethan had focused on the gunshots that had ended Celia’s life and then on the victim’s screaming sister. Now that his attention had been directed to Celia’s forehead, Ethan looked and was immediately stunned.

      Like a man in a trance, he raised his eyes back up to Sam’s face. “Oh my God, is that—?”

      “Definitely. Just like his signature mark, except the red dot’s off center.” Sam paused, staring at the bull’s-eye. “That might mean something.”

      “Yeah, that the old man hasn’t figured out how to be in two places at once,” Ethan said, pointing out the obvious. “He’s in prison, Sam, where he’s been for twenty years.”

      “Almost twenty years,” Sam corrected. He was a stickler when it came to facts.

      Ethan conceded the point. “Either way, he couldn’t have done this. Besides, the old man only killed men who reminded him of his brother. Celia would have never been mistaken for a man, even in the dark.” The second the words were out of his mouth, Ethan suddenly realized that Zoe was still in the room. “Oh, God, I’m sorry, Zoe. I didn’t mean—”

      But Zoe waved his words away. She was far too numbed by what had happened to take offense at something so trivial.

      “It’s all right. I understand. And I want to help.” She looked from one man to the other. “I want to help any way I can to find who did this to Celia.”

      “Right now, you can help by going and getting yourself checked out by a doctor,” Sam told her, undoing the bowtie he had put on under protest for the wedding. He took his cell phone out of his pocket and began to put in a call for backup.

      “I don’t need to be checked out,” Zoe maintained stubbornly. “I didn’t hit my head. I found my sister, murdered. I don’t think the doctor’s got any kind of medication to treat that.” She took a breath, struggling to center herself. “I’m sorry about screaming like that before.”

      Sam shrugged. “Under the circumstances, it’s understandable.”

      “Okay,” she said, moving on. “What can I do to help?”

      It was obvious that although she’d always been regarded as the meek sister and as far as he knew, she had always kept pretty much out of the way and in the shadows, Zoe was not about to just fade away until such time as he could get around to questioning her at length.

      But he definitely didn’t want her underfoot, either.

      “Okay, you want something to do?” he asked her.

      She was almost eager as she said, “Yes.”

      “Tell everyone out there that due to circumstances beyond everyone’s control, the wedding’s been called off—but they can’t leave, because someone has to take down their statements.” He spared her a preoccupied look. “Do you think you can do that for me?”

      For as long as she could remember, she’d always hated having to break bad news to anyone, let alone an entire gathering of people who had come expecting to have a good time. But this was something that clearly needed to be done and Sam was asking her to do it. She put her own discomfort aside and nodded.

      “Yes, sure, of course. And I’ll tell them how very sorry you are that this happened and they had to be put through this.”

      Slowly checking out the victim, aka his bride-to-be, for a second time, albeit more thoroughly, Sam was already preoccupied. Zoe’s words were only half registering as he looked up at her.

      Belatedly, he realized what she’d just said. “Oh, yeah, why not?” he said.

      “That’s Sam’s way of saying ‘yes,’” Ethan prompted helpfully, giving her an encouraging smile.

      Zoe flashed a very small, weak smile at him in response. “Yes, I know.”

      Ethan looked after her for a moment as Zoe left the room. “I think they used to call that kind of thing ‘plucky,’” he commented to Sam.

      “Yeah, whatever,” Sam muttered, his mind far more preoccupied with the body before him and the murder it so clearly represented.

      In all honesty, he hadn’t wanted to marry Celia and had felt almost resentful she had somehow managed to trap him in this arrangement. But he certainly hadn’t wanted to see her dead.

      A sliver of guilt accompanied his thoughts before he pushed it—and those thoughts—away.

      Sam rose again, knowing that more definitive information would be forthcoming from the medical examiner’s autopsy. He was already impatient to get his hands on it and the ME and his crew hadn’t even arrived yet.

      “Definitely the same,” he said under his breath, more to himself than Ethan. “And yet, different.”

      Ethan felt he should be there for him, seeing as how Sam had just lost his bride-to-be, but there СКАЧАТЬ