herself shivering as she unlocked the Camaro. She barely noticed that the security guard had followed her out. “Safe night,” he called.
She made a U-turn on the empty street. Her hands navigated the car while her mind worked through all the questions she needed answers to.
Why hadn’t her father told the police about Martin Dowell after his wife was murdered? Why would he have kept that information secret when it might have helped find a murderer?
Harper had investigated criminals all her adult life and she knew there was only one logical reason. Her father was protecting Dowell.
Her heart felt like a stone in her chest.
Sixteen years of pain. Sixteen years of not understanding why anyone would kill her mother—a free spirit with strawberry-blond hair and blue eyes, who loved being barefoot on sunny days, who hummed while she painted. Who never in her life hurt a soul. Who was stabbed to death, stripped of her clothes, and left on the cold kitchen floor like a piece of meat.
She’d had no enemies. No drug problem or crazy ex with an axe to grind. Her murder had never made any sense.
Now, though, Harper was beginning to see how it might have worked. Her father had represented Dowell and lost the case that sent him to prison for a long time. The man had lost everything. He must have been furious.
She didn’t know how he’d done it from inside jail, but when it came to organized crime, nothing was impossible. He would have had connections on the outside willing to do jobs for him.
She wondered distantly why he hadn’t killed her, too. It would have been easy the day her mother died. She was only twelve and all alone. Or any day after that. She’d never known to watch her back. To be afraid.
Harper let out a choked breath, and the sound of it startled her back to awareness.
For a disorienting second, she didn’t know where she was. Ahead, a dark stretch of road unfurled in the cold glow of her headlights. Her scanner, which had been burbling a steady stream of information a moment ago, was silent.
She was on the highway heading across the saltwater marshes. The lights of Savannah were far behind.
Isolated and gloomy during the day, the wetlands were worse at night. The flat landscape seemed to absorb light, creating a thick, inky blackness that sprawled in all directions—devoid of any sign of humanity.
Harper tensed, her hands tightening reflexively on the wheel.
How could she be so foolish? She hadn’t taken a circuitous route—hadn’t made certain no one followed her. For the first time in months she’d just … driven. Without thinking about who was behind her.
When she’d first talked to Luke and Blazer about how to live anonymously, they’d both identified this as the obvious weak point. Her home was off the books, and the office was protected by guards with guns and panic buttons and CCTV.
This journey—the one she made every night—this was the chink in her armor. The moment when she was completely alone and cut off.
The lieutenant had been blunt. “If I was going to kill you, that’s where I’d do it.”
She tried to focus on the road ahead, but her eyes kept straying to the rearview mirror.
It was all too easy to imagine a light that started small and far away, but grew closer and closer. A car driven by someone who wanted her dead, all because her dad had gotten mixed up with the mob back when she was eleven years old.
The sole set of headlights behind her were tiny in the distance, visible only because the land was so flat. Still, a trickle of nervous sweat ran down her spine.
She put her foot down. The Camaro responded, powering forward with a growl.
The lights behind her did not close in. Eventually, as she sped away, they disappeared completely. But she didn’t lift her foot from the gas until she reached the bridge onto the island.
Gradually, her heart rate returned to normal. The little town’s lights glowed reassuringly ahead. There was even a car, passing her the other way. She was safe.
She’d just reached the first red light when her phone rang.
Assuming it was Miles, she answered it on hands-free. “McClain.”
“Harper. It’s Luke.”
She was too tired to hide how glad she was to hear from him, and there was a breathless edge to her voice when she replied. “Hey. What’s up?”
“This is going to sound weird but I think I just passed your car. Are you