counted for little this evening. Perhaps he hadn’t been concentrating, for some reason, and had been taken unawares; he had received few defensive wounds, but had been stabbed several times in the side, neck, and head. The attack had been unnecessarily frenzied—clearly attempted murder, and the hours ahead would reveal whether that attempt had been successful. She was told that it was touch-and-go as to whether he would survive the night. She could only hope that his fitness would serve him now where it had failed him before.
You can do it, Pete, she thought.
He would pull through. He had to.
She put the phone down and then quickly checked the online case file for updates. No developments as yet. Officers had already taken statements from Tom Kennedy and the woman he had been out with, Karen Shaw. Amanda recognized the name; Shaw was a local crime reporter. According to their accounts, they’d simply met up for a drink as friends. Their children were in the same year at school, so maybe that was all it was, but Amanda hoped for everyone’s sake that Shaw was more trustworthy than most in her profession. Especially now.
Because she still didn’t know why Pete had been here.
She remembered how alive he’d seemed this afternoon, reading the message he’d received and then making his arrangements. At the time, she’d suspected a date of some kind. In reality, it must have been this—and whatever this turned out to be, the fact remained that Pete was involved in the case and shouldn’t have been here off duty. It was a breach of professionalism.
And what bothered her more was the knowledge that she’d effectively pushed him into it. She’d wanted him to be happy. If she hadn’t pressed him, he would still be alive.
He is still alive.
She had to cling to that. More than anything else, she needed to be professional and focused right now. She couldn’t afford to let her emotions out. Guilt. Fear. Anger. Once loose, any one of them would charge off, dragging the others along like dogs chained in a pack. And that was no good at all.
Pete was still alive.
Jake Kennedy was still alive.
She was not going to lose either of them. But there was only one that she could do anything about right now, and so finally she shut down the case file and got out of the car.
Inside the house, she stepped gingerly over the dance of dried blood at the bottom of the stairs, then walked cautiously into the living room, preparing herself for the sight she knew awaited her.
Several CSIs were at work in here, measuring, analyzing, and taking photographs, but she tuned them out, focusing instead on the overturned coffee table and, inevitably, the blood smeared and pooled on the floor. There was enough of it that she could smell it in the air. Her career had brought her face-to-face with worse than this, but knowing it had been Pete attacked in here meant what she was seeing now was impossible to accept.
She watched the CSIs for a moment. The forensic work was so somber, so thorough, that it felt like the room was already being treated as a murder scene. As though everybody in here knew a truth that she had yet to catch up with.
She went through to the spare room. The walls were lined with bookcases, with several boxes on the floor still to be unpacked. Tom Kennedy was pacing back and forth between them, following an elaborate path, the same way an animal might wear away the ground in an enclosure. Karen Shaw was sitting in a chair by a computer table, holding one elbow, her other hand at her mouth, staring at the floor.
Tom noticed Amanda and came to a stop. She recognized the expression on his face. People dealt with situations like this in different ways—some almost supernaturally calm, others distracting themselves with motion and activity—but in every case, the behavior was about displacement. Right now Tom Kennedy was panicking and struggling to contain it. If he couldn’t move in the direction of his son, then he needed to be moving somewhere. After he stopped walking, his body began to tremble.
“Tom,” she told him, “I know this is difficult. I know this is terrifying for you. But I need you to listen to me and I need you to believe me. We are going to find Jake. I promise you.”
He stared back at her. It was obvious that he didn’t believe her, and