Cutting Edge

Her two-bedroom town house even had a small, private garden area.

She stopped briefly to water her plants before unlocking her front door. She heard the shower running, and her heart skipped a beat until she saw Devon’s keys and black bag on her entry table.

He could even sense when she needed him. She might just be falling in love with the man. Hot shower sex was just what she needed to get her mind off Nora and Maggie. Because she felt like shit for what she’d said to Nora. Maybe it was true, well, a lot of it was true-Nora had been micromanaging her life since she took over the role of mother when Quin was nine. But Nora wasn’t a liar, and all day Quin feared she’d believed her mother because she was desperate for something indefinable.

She took the stairs two at a time. The upstairs was moist and humid. How long did that man shower? She pulled off her T-shirt with the State Arson Investigator logo on the pocket.

“Devon, it’s me!”

Before she opened the shower door, she knew something was wrong. No one was in the shower. There was no steam, the air thick with cool water vapor. The pebbled glass door distorted her view, but she could swear Devon was sitting on the shower floor. Unable to stop herself, her hand already on the handle, she pulled it open.

Devon was slumped on the shower floor, his skin so pale it was translucent, long bloodless gashes down his chest, back, and arms. His eyes were open, and they were no longer bright, vibrant blue. They were glazed, faded, and lifeless.

She screamed, then covered her mouth with both hands. He was dead. No, no, no!

“You weren’t supposed to find him.”

Quin spun around and Maggie stood there in the doorway between her bedroom and bath. In that split second, Quin realized everything Nora had told her was true. Fear crept up her spine until she could barely think.

“All I did was go to the garage because I thought I heard something, and I wanted to be there when you drove up. But your car was already there.”

“I–I walk to work.” Quin looked around for a weapon, but the only one she saw was the knife in Maggie’s hand.

“I wanted to talk to you.” Maggie sounded like a child. “You like her more than me, don’t you?”

“Wh-who?”

From her pocket, Maggie pulled out a picture of Nora. It had been mutilated, but Quin knew exactly what it was. Nora at Quin’s college graduation.

Nora had always shown up at her soccer games. Or when Quin took first place in the state spelling bee. Every play she was in, whether she had a small role or a leading spot, Nora had been there. At her high school graduation, her college graduation, her promotion party.

Quin had taken Nora for granted. Resented her because she wasn’t her mother. She was her sister, and Quin alternately loved and despised her.

Quin had broken up with one of her boyfriends, one she’d thought she’d loved, when he’d suggested she talk to someone about her problems with Nora. “She’s been nothing but cool to you,” he’d said. “I don’t see why you are so hot and cold with her.”

No way in hell was she seeing a shrink, she’d said, and she’d booted him out of her house and out of her life. Quin wasn’t crazy, and she could deal with her own emotions just fine, thank you very much. After that, she rarely introduced her boyfriends to her sister, and if she did it was a brief event.

But it niggled at her like a sneeze that wouldn’t come, and now-for the first time she recognized that she’d been grossly unfair.

Quin was paralyzed. She wasn’t a cop, she was an arson investigator. A nerd. She was smart, not street- savvy.

The television shows always had the good guys trying to keep the bad guys talking until the cavalry showed. “What do you want, Maggie?”

“I wanted my father. I thought that’s what you wanted, too.”

When she first got to know Maggie, Quin’s little sister had been just nine, the same age Quin was when their mother was sent to prison. But it wasn’t until a few years later that they really had meaningful conversations. And one of them had been about their fathers.

It was then that Quin told Maggie that Nora had lied about her father. She’d believed what her mother said- she’d been so lucid, so detailed. And Quin had found him. Randall Teagan was a real person.

Nora hadn’t denied that, only that he wasn’t her father.

Quin had believed her mother because she’d wanted to. Needed to. And that was really the point when she’d bonded with Maggie. Because Nora had taken away her father, too.

You’ve been such an immature brat.

She prayed Nora would forgive her.

“Why did you kill him?” Quin couldn’t look at Devon again. Guilt fought with fear.

“I thought he was an intruder.”

“An intruder in my shower?” Her voice broke into a sob.

Maggie shrugged, then glared at her. “I needed you. But I can see you’re just like all the others. A selfish bitch. Now I won’t feel guilty.”

Quin watched as the picture of Nora floated to the floor. She should have kept her eyes on Maggie, she thought in the split second before two metal darts hit her stomach and she collapsed in terrible pain, her limbs jerking.

I’m sorry, Nora.

Maggie dropped the Taser and her knife in the deep pockets of her peasant skirt. Quin’s body danced with the electrical charge flowing through her nerves. Maggie grabbed her under the shoulders and pulled her from the bathroom.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FIVE

“Where are the police?” Nora asked, jumping from the car as soon as Duke parked it. “I called it in more than ten minutes ago.”

Duke said, “It was a well-being check.”

“I’m a federal agent, you’d think they’d hop on it.”

She walked briskly down the path toward Quin’s town house.

“Hold it, Nora.”

“We don’t have time-” But she slowed down. “I know. I just need to know she’s okay.”

“I understand. Do you have a key?”

She held out her key ring by Quin’s key.

“How many entrances?”

“Two. Garage, which is downstairs under the town house. It has stairs going up to the first floor. And the front door. There’s a sliding glass door, but it’s not keyed.”

“I’ll go around to the garage and get in that way.”

“You need a remote to open that door.”

He gave her a half smile. “Garage remotes are not a problem. Give me a count of sixty to get in place, then enter. I’ll come up the back stairs. Just in case. Stay alert.”

Nora nodded. “Hers is the third garage from the end.”

Duke waved and jogged back down the path and around to the garage. Nora began counting.

One. Two. Three.

She bounced on her feet as she mentally counted while standing outside the privacy fencing around Quin’s small courtyard. She heard nothing inside and peered through a crack in the fencing. The kitchen light was on in the back, and the upstairs master bedroom light was on. Energy-conscious, Quin never left her lights on. She had to be home.

Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine. Sixty.