Nina wrapped her hands around the coffee mug in front of her. She’d been quiet since they’d found the doll. Quiet but calm. Steady. It wasn’t the reaction he was expecting and he watched her now, wary, regretting that he was having to push this but knowing he had no other choice.
“The doll belonged to my sister, Rachel, before she died.”
“You had it in your purse. I saw it the day we met and your bag spilled.”
“I—I’d recently taken it out. I left it in my office. I was planning on donating it. Maybe giving it to the kids’ ward.”
Simon jammed his hands into his hair. “You’re sure it was at your office and not your house? Because I assumed that’s how Davenport...”
She shook her head. “No. It was in my office. I’m positive.”
“So how the hell did Davenport or anyone else get it? The door past the receptionist is normally locked. I tried it myself.”
“I don’t know. I can’t tell you that.”
“All right. Let’s work on something else—how someone could know about the doll’s significance to you. You say it belonged to your sister, but she killed herself twenty years ago. Did you ever talk to Davenport about it?”
“Rachel died when I was sixteen years old. Suicide. She slit her wrists in the bath. But I never told Davenport that. Of course I didn’t. Why would I?”
“There was some press on it, but very little. I had to go digging for it. I suppose he could have found out about it, if he was doing research on you, but the doll...how would he make any connection with that doll?”
“He might have seen the photo.”
“What photo?”
“In our local paper. A reporter caught a shot of me sitting outside our house with my mother while the medics worked on Rachel. I was—I was cradling the doll. Again, the picture wouldn’t be easy to find, and pinpointing the doll would be tough, but if someone really cared enough to look and use it against me, it’s one explanation.”
“Damn it, I saw that picture in the paper, but I must have missed the doll. But even assuming that’s how Davenport saw the doll...why would he think it’s something he could use to torture you? Why would he risk breaking into your office to get it?”
When she remained silent, he urged, “Talk to me, Nina. Tell me why you’d blame yourself for Rachel’s death.”
Her mouth twisted with resentment. “Sure. Why not? You know every other mistake I’ve made in my life. Why not this, too?”
“That’s not why I’m asking and you—”
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t know how he knew about it or what it meant to me. But seeing it is both a comfort and a torture.”
“Why?”
“The day Rachel died? She’d come home from high school that afternoon and was horrid to me. She’d been going out with a boy for a year, Mason Ford, and he treated her like dirt. He’d break up with her one day and then demand she come back the next. I—”
Nina’s words broke off as she took a deep breath. When she spoke again, her voice was steadier. Determined. “I’d found out he was cheating on her. With not just one but four other girls. And in the middle of a fight about who was supposed to set the table for dinner that night, I got angry. So angry I told her about Mason. She was devastated and thought I was lying. She charged out of the house to go tell him how horrible I’d been. Instead, he laughed in her face and told her she was his go-to girl. The one he had sex with when no one else was available. She came back to me, sobbing and begging me to help her. I held her. I said I was sorry. And I tried to say the right thing to help her. But I obviously wasn’t able to find the right words. She’d tried to commit suicide twice before. And this time, she succeeded. My dad was the one who found her.” She looked up at Simon with haunted eyes. “He said he blamed me,” she whispered. “He apologized later. Said he didn’t mean it over and over again. But at that moment, he believed it. And I believed him. Part of me still does. After all, my words drove her to something horrible and yet I couldn’t find the right words later on, the ones to stop