When Darkness Ends (Moments in Boston #3) - Marni Mann Page 0,6

thirty. Make sure you’re ready.”

I licked the sauce off my fingers. “You don’t have any exams this week?”

He shrugged, grabbing another bottle of beer from the fridge. “Nothing I can’t finesse my way through. You know this degree is just a technicality, so when I open my own private airline one day, they can call me a fool, but they can’t call me an uneducated one.”

“Make sure you keep a position open for me. I’m probably going to need it.”

“Fuck that,” he drawled. “You’re going to be an incredible surgeon, and if anything ever happens to me, you’re going to be the one who saves me.” He smiled and pointed at the bathroom. “Now, fucking move it. You’re down to twenty-five minutes.”

We’d had these dreams since we were kids, and Dylan had been pushing me toward mine ever since. I was just as hard on him even if he didn’t care as much about his degree.

College was better because we could do it together.

I tossed my paper plate in the trash and held my beer as I walked down the hallway. “Hey,” I said to him from the doorway of the bathroom.

He was headed into his room and stopped to look at me. “Yeah?”

“You’re buying tonight, and don’t try to finesse your way out of it.”

Laughter was his only response.

Four

After

Ashe

The police headquarters was located about halfway between Back Bay and Mission Hill. It was a massive, rectangular building, the entrance shaped like the top of an octagon, the wide body covered in square panes of glass that were mirrored and tinted, making it impossible for anyone to see in.

Even at night.

A reprieve for someone who liked to come into the office in the early hours of the morning.

Like myself.

I swiped my badge at the front and took the elevator to the third floor, wandering down the dark hallway until I arrived at my desk. Files overflowed from the bins that ran along the side; empty coffee cups and sticky notes littered the back. I cleared a path large enough to fit my bag and unloaded the file of the most recent case I’d been assigned.

Lisa Mitchell, forty-seven, found shot between her shoulder blades in the bedroom of her three-million-dollar home on the 600 block of Boylston Street. Her photo was attached to the top of the folder, and I stared at her face, waiting for the missing piece of this puzzle to come to me.

For the last several days, I had been reviewing the details of her case and the results forensics had found so far.

Mitchell’s housekeeper, the only person with a key and front-door code, had found her early in the morning when she arrived at work. She had called the police, and I had been one of the first on the scene.

Never married, owner of a large marketing company, Mitchell had been a prominent member of Boston’s elite society—a social circle larger than most with connections that ran deep. Her social media accounts were full of countries she had traveled to, celebrities she had shaken hands with, and dinners that had been over five hundred a plate.

“Lisa, what the fuck happened to you?” I said, running my hand through my hair.

The sound of heels clicking on the floor filled my ears. I glanced up just as the captain approached.

“Morning,” I said to her.

“Detective Flynn, what brings you in at this hour?”

Dressed in a pressed black suit and red lipstick, she was more put together than most at four o’clock in the morning.

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“Because of”—she looked at the file on my desk—“Mitchell’s case or something else?”

It took me a moment to answer, “Life keeps me awake, Captain.”

“You’re one of a very large club.” She took a seat in one of the chairs, her eyes telling me she understood. “How’s the case going? Any leads?”

I gathered the notes I’d taken, hitting them against the folder to make the edges even. “There are several people in her inner circle I still need to interview, and I’m waiting on forensics to finish a few outstanding reports.”

“Voice mails? E-mails? Any luck on those?”

“They still have to be retrieved. She had a password on her cell and computer.” I took a drink of my coffee. “It’s moving, just not as fast as I’d like.”

She held out her hand. “Let me take a look.”

I closed the folder, ensuring none of the evidence fell out, and gave it to her.

I followed her eyes as she read my initial report before flipping through the photographs I’d confiscated