library, figuring to catch Kobrinski on her way to see me. I didn’t like where all of this was leading, I thought grimly, namely, straight to Michael’s doorstep. He had more of a mask than almost anyone I knew and all that attitude had to be covering something. The only thing that kept me from just going up to my room and hiding under my blankets was the fact that it wasn’t up to me to decide. I was glad of that, because it just didn’t feel right to me—I didn’t want to like someone who was a killer—but with such damning evidence, I had to tell Pam Kobrinski.
I’d almost reached the library when I stopped. Hairs prickled down the back of my neck. Not knowing why I did so, I turned around just in time to see the flapping tails of a dark overcoat disappear into the woods. I moved a few steps farther, wondering what in hell Michael, a purely urban creature, was doing walking off the road, much less heading into the woods. After all, the trees would certainly impair any dramatic entrance, I thought wryly, catching at that great billowing coat.
My heart caught in mid-beat and my blood seemed to freeze solid in my veins. Flapping. Billowing. Billowing. Jack had described seeing Faith’s jumper billowing, when it never could have.
Oh shit.
It was Michael out there, the night Faith was murdered, I thought, my stomach dropping away. And now Michael had tried to destroy the evidence that might connect him with her. Michael was the murderer.
“Oh. There you are.”
The quiet voice at my shoulder startled me so violently that I pivoted around, throwing a perfectly focused, unthinking elbow strike to the speaker’s head. It was the sort of reaction that my coach Nolan has been trying to coax out of me forever. The only problem was that Nolan has always urged me to know precisely what my target was. It wasn’t until I’d swung around that I saw to my horror that it was Pam Kobrinski’s head I was trying to knock off her shoulders.
I didn’t have enough control to stop the strike, but my good luck loitered: My elbow whizzed past her, three inches shy of actual contact. She flinched backward, and deflected the blow as she went into a defensive stance. I stumbled, then froze as best I could, lest the good detective shoot me, just on principle.
We eyed each other warily for a second, me panting with panic at what I’d almost done, she watching to see what I’d do next. I put my hands over my mouth, then over my eyes, trying to figure out how to start apologizing.
“Hiding like that isn’t a real good followup to an aggressive move. Makes you a real good target,” Pam murmured, never taking her eyes off me as she slowly rose up from her crouch. She swallowed, licked her lips, then cracked her neck. “Makes me want to hit you.”
I peeled my hands away from my face. “Oh God, you scared me…I am so sorry.” Great; my two best strikes had come first when I was asleep, and then against someone on my side. On top of that, if Nolan ever found out that I’d backed off an attack, he’d nail my hide to the barn wall. Good job, Em.
“You jumpy for some good reason?” The detective finally relaxed, shaking out tensed muscles. The thoughts that had been engulfing me came flooding back.
“Just now, right now, it was…I saw Michael going into the woods,” I stammered. I told her briefly about what Jack had said about billowy skirts and my discovery of the burning stolen diary. “He must have got panicked from my talk and tried to get rid of the evidence.”
She suddenly was all business. “How far down?”
I pointed to the place, about a city block from where we stood.
She nodded briefly. “Here’s what you do. First, you go to the library. You stay near people. You follow me and I swear to God, I’ll shoot you myself.” Her finger came within an inch of my nose. “I don’t need any more heroics from you, Wonder Woman. Capisce?”
I nodded, my throat tightening. She didn’t need heroics and I didn’t need to be anywhere near this confrontation. Michael, how could you?
“Second”—she knelt down to check that her shoelaces were tied tightly—“You call every cop that Monroe’s got. You tell them an officer needs assistance. Got that?”
“Got it,” I said. “I go to the library, I call