Last to Die

by Kate Brady

Genres: Police Procedurals; Female Sleuths; Romantic Suspense; Crime Fiction; Suspense

Synopsis

A ruthless killer hides in plain sight, someone no one believes is capable of murder. Within a week, six women will be murdered, all punished for their dark pasts. Detective Dani Cole is determined to track down this serial killer whose victims include a young woman she pulled out of a life of crime. Her investigation leads her to a photography foundation and the renowned photographer Mitch Sheridan, a man she she fell in love with years ago but has tried to forget. Dani and Mitch are instantly attracted to each other again, though their troubled pasts keep them from getting too close. Together, through the course of the investigation, they unearth a dark chain of deception that leads to a killer who is closer than they think.

Release date: September 1, 2010

Publisher: Forever

Print pages: 429

Sample

Camden Park, Lancaster, Maryland

Sunday, October 3, 7:50 p.m.

WHOOPS AND GIGGLES, the scent of Belgian waffles in the air, the screech of balloons being bullied into bubble-eared poodles. The sidewalks teemed
with mothers pushing overstuffed strollers and fathers talking into Bluetooth earpieces, while preschool children orbited
their parents like forgotten moons—lagging behind, straying from the paths, lured from arm’s reach by the colorful remnants
of popped poodles on the ground or the call of a snow cone vendor. Bait, if you were a child molester or kidnapper. Easy pickings.


The killer was neither. Children were of no interest; they committed no crimes. Their mothers did. Heinous, unspeakable crimes
they thought would go unpunished.


Wrong.

One such woman was about to learn that. Young, with dark flowing hair and porcelain cheeks, she lurked behind a magician’s
kiosk, aiming her cheap little camera at the Kinney family—Robert and Alana and their two-year-old son, Austin. For the past hour, she had secretly trailed the Kinneys
through the carnival, snapping photo after photo of the child. Yes, two years after the fact, her conscience had apparently
kicked in.


Too little, bitch. Too late.

Oblivious to her own shadow, the woman hunched deeper into her denim jacket and followed the Kinneys into the parking lot,
keeping to the outer row of cars then edging into the woods to sneak more photos of little Austin. Fool. She was making things
easy, tucked out of sight with her righteous ambition and her camera. The killer cut between cars and closed in, face lowered
though there was little chance of being recognized: boots, cap, beard. Loose nylon jacket with big square pockets. Trusty
shears inside.


Easy, now. Watch, wait for the right moment. The Kinneys headed for the far corner of the parking lot, Austin’s legs straddling
his father’s neck, his little face stuck in a blue cloud of cotton candy. Robert Kinney pushed a button in his hand and a
black Mercedes bleeped to life, and the woman who was about to die skirted behind a row of huge rhododendrons. The killer
straightened, adrenaline surging. She was only fifteen feet away. Distracted, out of sight, unsuspecting.


Now.

The killer came in fast, from behind, shears aiming for that slender throat like a missile. The woman must have heard; she
whirled and opened her mouth to scream, but the blades sank into her larynx and the sound came out Unkh. Her knees buckled and she dropped, the shears plunging in and out, in and out, time dragging each thrust into the slow motion
of a dream. The cheek, don’t leave the cheek. The shears pulled out and smashed higher against her face, the smooth flesh turning to pulp, blood spraying onto the killer’s
lips, tasting like copper.


Fifteen seconds, maybe twenty—Stop now, before she’s gone. It’s important that she live long enough to understand what’s happening.
Quit, stand up. Breathe.


The killer straightened, lungs heaving, and wiped spittle onto the jacket’s sleeve. The woman lay wide-eyed on the ground,
her knees pulling in like an accordion losing air. A gurgle bubbled from her throat and her heart kept at it for another few
seconds, then that beautiful moment of dawning came to her eyes.


She knew. In that final, glorious second, the women always understood. Take it, her dying eyes said.


Yes, now, take it. For Kristina. To bring her back.

The killer knelt, gathered a handful of blood-slick hair, and sawed at it with the shears until the hank came free. One step
closer to retribution.


A car horn blasted, picking up time again. Shit, get going—there’s still so much to do. Call Fulton; tonight, he would earn
his pay. Even back here in the woods, if left, the woman’s body would eventually be found. There was no time for that sort
of complication. Only a week until the meeting with Kristina.


So, pocket the shears and the hair. And take the camera—for God’s sake, don’t leave the camera. Shot after shot of Austin
Kinney.


The killer looked down, satisfaction pulsing in every vein, then pulled out an embossed card and opened it. The clock was
ticking, but this was important: Keep the records straight. On the right side of the card, a scrawled promise: Next Sunday, Kristina, 7:00 p.m. On the left, written in a different hand, a list of six names. Smears of brownish-red marked through the first three.


The killer bent, touched a finger to the dead woman’s cheek, then placed the glistening red ink on the fourth name and dragged
a bloody line across it. Woman Number Four, done. Only two more to go.


Now, to tie up the loose ends the dead woman had unraveled. The killer gave a final glance to the body and walked away, keeping
to the woods and digging out a prepaid cell phone. Fulton answered on the first ring. “Are you with Russell Sanders?”


Fulton yawned. “He’s been in his apartment all evening.”

“What’s he doing?”

“How the hell should I know? He’s alone, spent some time in the kitchen.”

Okay. So at least Sanders wasn’t out talking to the police. Maybe the dead woman hadn’t told him yet that she’d found Austin
Kinney. Still, she had consulted with Sanders, that much was certain. Probably planned to run right over to him with the camera
full of pictures tonight. Reason enough to make sure he didn’t go digging around trying to uncover secrets, or worse, calling
his buddy Mitch Sheridan.


“You want me to take him?” Fulton. He was getting antsy. “He’s pacing. Looks like he might be on the phone.”

Calling police? The dead woman? Mitch? Sanders had to be stopped.

“Yes. Take him now.”

The bandages reeked, the tang of infection wrinkling Mitch Sheridan’s nostrils even from several feet away. An aging Kurd
crouched still as a heron, robes pooling around his ankles and grenade launcher propped against his one good shoulder. The sun pulled ripples of heat from the sand,
while in the distance, row upon row of tents sagged against their poles, like soldiers too weary to stand.

K-chhr, k-chhr.

The camera’s shutter whirred. Mitch zoomed in with the Leica. Not too small; keep the stump of the man’s right shoulder in
the frame, the bandages filthy and oozing. Don’t ask his name—that was a cardinal rule. Don’t think about the pain or wonder
how it happened. Just get the pictures, tell the story.

K-chhr.

“Your turn,” Mitch said, standing and tucking his Leica into the case hanging around his neck. The kid stepped in, about ten
years old, and aimed a second camera just as Mitch had done. Mitch had met him soon after arriving at the refugee camp, found
him digging through a trash pile with a mongrel dog. The kid was fascinated by the camera and after a few days, Mitch let
him try his hand with an extra Canon. He was good, had a good eye.

Mitch started to bend down but noticed the sentry rise from his crouch. The old eyes crinkled into the sunrise, his body quivering
like a live wire. “Firoke,” he whispered.

Mitch frowned. Firoke, firoke. He should know that word, but couldn’t place it. Not until a sound started in the distance.

Thwp-thwp-thwp-thwp…

Jesus, firoke. Helicopter, in Soani.

Mitch’s heart lurched. “Come on,” he said, grabbing the boy’s hand. He had to get to shelter. The sentry shouted into a radio,
frantic, the sound of the chopper growing louder. A hundred yards ahead, the camp erupted. Men grabbing weapons, women racing about, crying for their children.

Thwp-thwp-thwp…

“Faster,” Mitch shouted, his hand a vise grip on the kid’s. The chopper swooped in, a giant bee, and the boy stumbled, kicking
up sand. Mitch hauled him to his feet. “Run,” he said, but the rotors hacked up his voice and threw it to the sky where the
chopper stopped in midair. The doors slid open. Rivers of terror poured down.

Bombs. Explosions. Gunfire.

Mitch kept running, crouching over the boy and covering his head, geysers of sand exploding in every direction. Fifty yards
from shelter, forty. Keep go—

His legs went out from under him; the kid screamed. Mitch humped halfway up, spitting sand. Don’t let go. Whatever you do,
don’t let go of the kid. But his legs gave out and pain seared his limbs. The kid yelled at him, tugging on his hand.

Let him go, Mitch thought. He can get to shelter. But his fingers squeezed tighter, while sand and debris and hot spatters of blood rained against his face like tiny darts.
He tried to crawl, but it was as if the desert had turned to quicksand. He couldn’t drag his legs beneath him.

“Come,” the boy cried, and Mitch knew he had to do it. Let go.

He cursed and opened his hand. “Run,” he yelled, and the boy took off. Mitch watched, sand blurring his vision, and the boy
dashed toward the shelter of the camp, closer, clos—

The sky went white.

“Noo!” Mitch screamed, the ground rattling. The boy jumped, thrown into the air. He looked like a rag doll, limp and helpless,
hurtled through a silent sky, complete with pigtails and ribbons, ice cream in his hand. What? Mitch shook his head; it made no sense. But it wasn’t the boy now,
it was Mitch’s little sister, Aubrey, who’d twisted from his hand and run into the street. Don’t let go. But he had. Mitch called out, the battle coming back to his ears again, and from high above, the chopper began to bleep, like
a dump truck backing up. Bleep-bleep—


Mitch jerked. His eyes popped open and he jolted upright, heart slamming into his rib cage.

The dream again. He cursed, letting the sound of his voice scatter the nightmare, like dust from an old blanket shaken in
the wind. He rubbed a hand over his face and found it damp with perspiration, his breaths coming short. For Christ’s sake,
he thought he’d gotten past this. He’d put his sister’s tragic impulse from mind two decades ago, and this wasn’t Iraq. He
was in Switzerland now—he had been for six months. In a hospital for two, fighting for his life, then at rehab learning to
walk again, then to this bungalow with its comfortable furnishings, state-of-the-art physical therapy equipment, breathtaking
view of the Alps. The perks of wealth. No choppers here, no bombs or photographs of a kid he didn’t save. Just the incessant
bleep-bleep from a nightstand a foot away.


The satellite phone.

He reached to the nightstand. Only one person would be calling him on the sat phone: Russell Sanders. Damn him.

Mitch picked it up, grunted.

“Mitch, are you there? Can you hear me?”

He flipped on a lamp and dropped his head against the phone. It was the size of a brick, like the walkie-talkies he and his
brother used to play with as kids, crawling around in the web of drainpipes at Sedalia Park, dodging goose shit as they emerged from any one of a half dozen culverts on the bank of the lake. Except that what used to be static
at fifty yards now allowed conversation halfway around the world. He cleared his throat. “I can hear you,” he said.


“Christ, I was afraid you wouldn’t answer.”

“I’m not coming home, Russ. Get off my back. I told you, I’m done.”

“You don’t mean that. You need to show the pictures, tell the stories. You need it like you need to breathe.”

“Like hell I do.” Mitch dragged his legs over the bed, forced himself to sit up. There was a time he believed his photographs
made a difference, but the attack on the camp at Ar Rutbah had only proved it was never enough. No matter what he did, the
bleeding didn’t stop. Somewhere in the world, the choppers still came, famines still raged, diseases still killed. Little
boys got blown to the sky.


“Damn it, Mitch, this exhibition matters more than the others.”

“Sure. It’s the one where famous photographer and humanitarian J. M. Sheridan let a kid get blown to bits. Big money for shots
of that, I’m sure.”


“That’s not what I mean.”

“You want to do the Ar Rutbah show? Do it without me. You’re lucky you even have those pictures. It wasn’t my choice to send
them.” No, some well-meaning hospital staffer had gone through Mitch’s things, given them to his brother Neil sometime during
Mitch’s unconscious phase. Neil, in turn, had sent them on to Russ. Mitch had never even seen most of them. Not that he wanted
to.


“Mitch, this is important.” Russ paused. “If something happens, promise me you’ll do this show.”

“If something happens?” The hairs on the back of Mitch’s neck stood up. “What are you talking about?”


“I’m in trouble, Mitch. It’s about the Foundation. You need to come home. Mount the show.”

“Oh, please…” But Russell’s tone of voice made Mitch stop. It wasn’t like Russ to try to manipulate him. “Look, I don’t know—”

“What?” Russ said, but his voice seemed aimed away from the phone. Mitch heard a thump.

“Russell?”

“No.” Something scraped in Mitch’s ear, then Russ again. “Unh.”


“Russ, what’s happening?”

Another sound, some shuffling. Maybe a piece of furniture dragging across the floor. “Russ, what’s going on?”

“Mitch.”


Mitch stood, wide awake now, his left leg screaming at him. He gripped the phone tighter. “Russ.”

More scrapes and scuffs, another voice. A man. Panic trickled in. Mitch listened, straining to interpret sounds that were
happening on the other damn side of the planet, then, as suddenly as the commotion had started, silence streamed over the
satellite phone. No more voices, no more scuffle.


“Russell.”

But all Mitch could hear was the thundering in his chest. The connection was dead.

Camden Park, Lancaster, Maryland

Monday, October 4, 6:46 a.m.

A STORM ROLLED THROUGH Dani Cole’s dreams. Thunder mingling with gunshots, until a cell phone chimed in and yanked her from sleep. A nose nuzzled
her chin.


“Ick,” she muttered. “Get off.”

The forty-five-pound pit bull on her chest didn’t move. Dani pushed at the muzzle with one hand and groped for the phone with
the other. “What?”


Chief Gibson.

“Wake up,” he said. Gibson wasn’t a man to waste words on pleasantries, at least not to Dani. She rolled upright, shoving
Runt to the other cushion of the sofa. Two weeks since she’d slept in her bedroom. The thunder and gunshots were worse in
there.


“What’s going on?” she asked.

“We have a murder at Camden Park,” Gibson said. “You’re on it.”

She must still be asleep. He wasn’t making sense. “You mean, I’m back?” she said. “No more administrative duty?”


“You’re back,” Gibson said, but he sounded unhappy about it. “Tifton caught the body. He said he needs you to look at it.”

Dani stood, alert now. Tifton? They’d been partnered back in their patrol days, but moved through the ranks separately. Getting
back on a case was great. Doing it with Tift was even better.


But not with Internal Affairs watching her every move. Dani tamped back a thump of anger and padded to the living room window.
“Hold on,” she said. She stuck two fingers through the blinds and scissored them open. Sure enough, a gray sedan squatted
against the curb, less than a block away.


She dropped the blinds. “So if I’m working again, get IA off me,” she said into the phone.

Gibson hedged. “I’m not the one who ordered it.”

“But you can call them off. For two weeks, I haven’t been able to pee without those bastards breathing down my back. I’m not
sneaking around making any deals with Ty Craig and you know it. Call them off.” She paused, frustration burning her cheeks.
“I’m not my father, Chief.”


But Dave Gibson had never believed that. Dani knew he was just waiting for her to cross the same lines her father had crossed
before he’d gotten fired, before he spent the rest of his pathetic life as an ex-cop and a two-bit thug for Ty Craig. In spite
of Dani’s record in the department, Gibson still gave her the kind of look you’d give something crawling under the kitchen
counter.


She held out. “Am I working or not?”

He cursed. “I’ll handle IA. You get over to Camden Park.”


Twenty minutes later, twisting her hair up into a quick ponytail, Dani watched the sedan pull away from the curb and a small
weight lifted from her shoulders. She rolled through the gates at Camden Park a little before seven-thirty. A uniform waved
her onto a television-perfect crime scene: yellow ribbon strung around the perimeter of a parking lot and disappearing into
the woods, half a dozen black-and-whites parked at various angles, a couple of gray Chevrolets belonging to investigators.
An ambulance sat square to the curb, the back open and two EMTs sitting on the bumper swapping tales—no one to save. Members
of the media were roped off at a respectable distance, as if distance mattered with the kinds of magnifying lenses they used,
and a handful of detectives in coats and loosened ties stood in the parking lot.


Reginald Tifton was one. He spoke with two of the uniforms, pointing in an arc behind them. Dani walked up as the officers
jogged off in the direction Tifton had pointed.


“About time, Nails,” he said using her departmental nickname. He dropped from the curb and met her in an empty parking slot.
He was a big man of forty-five, black, going for wife number three, with a bowling-ball head perched directly on wide shoulders—no
neck. He spoke like a Yale graduate, except when he decided to turn on the street charm and make a suspect believe he was
from the hood. He was actually from the old-money area of Cheshire Hills, and secretly, Dani suspected he had gone to Yale. “Your beauty routine hold you up this morning?”


“Screw you,” she said. Too early for creativity.

Tifton’s eyes homed in on hers. “I haven’t seen you since your dad’s funeral. You hanging in there?”


Something tugged in her chest. Not heartache—her relationship with her father certainly hadn’t merited that. Must be heartburn
from the coffee. “You mean, do I enjoy pushing papers and doing mandatory grief counseling? Sure.” She looked around the scene.
“What do we have?”


Tifton knew when to back off. He jerked his chin toward the bushes. “Guy trolling the woods with a metal detector found a
dead woman. Stabbed sometime during the clownfest this weekend.”


“Why did you call me?” she asked, starting toward the site of the body.

“Thought you might know something on this one the rest of us don’t.”

“Why?”

“The vic was one of your charity cases.”

Dani stopped, the words hitting like ice water. Someone she knew? A knot climbed to her throat and she picked up her pace.
Tifton jogged after her.


“Nails, hold on. It’s ugly back there. It’s—”

The feet came into view and Dani hesitated, slowing as she approached the body. The left side of the face was battered beyond
recognition, but it was a woman with dark hair, her knees in a fetal position as if she’d pulled herself in while dying. Her
throat had been slashed—hacked, rather—and the dark puddle beneath her crawled with flies. Even in the open air, the smell
of death hung over her: dried blood and waste and stale flesh.


Dani stepped around to look at the face, caught a glimpse of the flesh peeking between blouse lapels. Her gaze snagged on
a tiny rosebud tattoo.


“Aw, no,” she said, shock pushing her back. She turned away. “No, no, no.”


Tifton said, “It’s her, right? Rosie?”

The backs of Dani’s eyeballs prickled and she braced her hands on her knees, squeezing her eyes closed to keep the tears from
coming. After a moment, she looked again at what was left of the face and forced her lungs to function. “Rose McNamara.”


“Okay,” Tifton said, then called to another investigator over Dani’s back: “I was right, Carter, it’s Rose McNamara. She hooked
for Ty Craig out of Readi—”


“No,” Dani said. “She hasn’t been hooking for a couple of years. She moved away, called me about a month ago to tell me she
was back.” Dani turned from the body, looking at Tifton. “She wasn’t tricking anymore—not for Craig, not for anybody. She
had a job at the Big Lots on Grimby Street. She was paying rent on her own apartment and trying to mend fences with her family.
She was making it.”


Grief came in a flood, but Dani conquered it and took a deep breath, forcing herself back to work. Don’t think about who the
victim was, just do the job. Pretend she’s a stranger and focus on finding the sonofabitch who would do something like this.


She pushed up her chin and walked the perimeter of the body, taking in the details. The victim’s eyes were open, sunken, her
throat stabbed into a mishmash of blood and torn tissue. The right side of her face was untouched—turned to the ground, probably—and
the fingers of her right hand were open, hollow, as if she’d been holding something. Her limbs were stiff with rigor. She
was fully clothed, and her hair—


“What the hell?” Dani crouched down to get a better look.

“Someone took a chunk,” the ME said.


Dani was shocked. “Here? You mean postmortem?”

“Postmortem, I can’t say. Here? I can say. He probably used the same object to cut the hair he used to stab her throat.”

“Object. What kind of object?”

“Long blade of some sort. Narrow, single-edged.”

“Like a hunting knife, or bowie?” Dani’s father had used one during hunting season, to slit the throats of his kills and hang
the carcasses to bleed. Dani still remembered the smell in the yard: sharp, coppery.


“Could be. Or boning knife,” the ME said. “You know, like chefs use.”

Dani inched around the body, trying to feel the killer—hunter or chef?—then sank in a crouch next to Rosie’s face. Tifton
bent down beside her.


“So, what’s the theory?”

Monster, Dani thought. “I don’t have a theory.” But an image reeled through her mind: some maniac decorating his bedposts with women’s
hair.


“Come on, you’re the one with that degree in psychology. What does Freud say about knives and hair?”

She started to snap at him then remembered it was Tifton. He wasn’t ridiculing the degree; he was serious. She shook her head.
“Freud’s specialty was penises. I don’t know what he said about hair.” She stood up, took a deep breath. “But whatever’s going
on here, it’s not anonymous. You don’t get this kind of overkill for nothing. It’s personal. Sexual, maybe.”


“So she knew him, or he knew her. That might explain why she came back here in the woods with him.”

“Got some footprints here,” a CSI guy said. “Boots, probably.”

“Boo-yah,” Tifton said. Prints were good.


The crime scene guy started taking the print and the dance got under way, the steps rehearsed three or four hundred times
a year in big cities like Philly and Baltimore, a few dozen times a year in bedroom communities like Lancaster. Techies, uniforms,
and detectives—all donning booties and gloves—went about their jobs: studying the body, canvassing for witnesses, searching
the woods and parking lot and collecting items that would ultimately prove there had been a carnival.


Dani hung with Tifton until reporters cornered her into updates for the noon news reports. She was careful not to give away
much, careful to make sure the department came across concerned: “Police are doing everything possible to protect innocent
citizens like our victim…” And, in case the murderer watched the news, she threw in some firecracker words: stupid, freak, monster. If this was more than a random act—and the hacked hair meant something—maybe the killer would take up the gauntlet.


Two hours into it, the ME gave a shout: “We’re ready to flip her.”

Dani shut down the interviews and went back to where the ME and one of his assistants flanked Rosie. A techie started to bag
her phone and Dani said, “Let me have it.” Wearing fresh latex gloves, she took it, then forced herself to watch while Rosie’s
body was ceremoniously flipped.


Nothing. No new wounds on her back side. No murder weapon beneath her. No clues dropped on the ground by her murderer, at
least not those visible to the naked eye.


She walked to the parking lot with Rosie’s phone, bent over the hood of Tifton’s car, and pressed Power. Copied down numbers
from recent calls, incoming calls, missed calls, then handed off the phone to a crime scene specialist and took out her own. She dialed the precinct. Spelled each name
and number to a desk officer.


Fifteen minutes later, the guy called back and recited the names and addresses of people matching the numbers from Rosie’s
phone. Dani recognized a few of them—Rosie’s sister, her landlord, her mom. No one identifiable as a boyfriend or lover. No
one unusual at all, at least not that Dani could tell, until the last name on the list. Russell Sanders. For half a second, the name didn’t register, then she saw the rest of the tagline: JMS Foundation.

Her belly flopped. She remembered a Russell Sanders. She’d never met him, but she’d heard about him—one summer eighteen years
ago. A summer she’d worked hard to forget.


She glanced around, illogically making sure no one else noticed the secret flutter in her belly, then checked the time of
the call: Sunday, 8:07 p.m.—the last call made from Rosie’s phone. There were two other calls to the same number from earlier
in the weekend.


“Careful, your brow is gonna stay that way.” Tifton had stepped over to her, pressing his thumb into the frown line above
her nose.


She brushed his hand away, using her own phone to dial that last number. She had to be sure.

Voice mail picked up. “You’ve reached Russell Sanders, managing director at the JM Sheridan Foundation for Photography Art. Please leave a message…”

Oh, God, she was right. Sheridan.

She took a deep breath, trying to wash the name from her mind and concentrate on what the call meant for Rosie. She turned
to Tift. “What would a hooker-turned-Big-Lots-cashier have to do with an upscale art-photography guild?” Tifton didn’t understand. “The last call Rosie made was to Russell Sanders.”


“Who’s Russell Sanders?”

“The director of the J. M. Sheridan foundation.”

“Open eyes, open hearts. That Sheridan?”


Like there was another. Despite every effort, a memory unraveled: Local boy turned photojournalist extraordinaire. Rich, handsome
do-gooder and champion of every underdog. Once, he’d tried to be Dani’s champion.


For that, she’d broken his nose.

Jesus, get a grip. She’d put memories of Mitch Sheridan away years ago, along with any futile regrets or silly pipe dreams.
“Yeah,” she said to Tifton, “that one.”


“Pretty posh circle of friends for a hooker.”

“I told you, she wasn’t hooking anymore.” But he was right. What would connect Rosie McNamara to a social paragon like Russell
Sanders?


“Looks like we’re done here,” Tifton said, pointing. A county van pulled away, the coroner’s wagon behind it. The crime scene
unit was packing it in. “We need to get to Rosie’s next of kin.”


A finger of sadness touched Dani’s chest. She’d met Rosie’s mother and sister—a couple of years ago when Rosie was still in
trouble. They were hurting then because of their estrangement. Dani could only imagine how much worse it would be now. “I’ll
go talk to them as soon as the ME’s office makes it official.”


“Meanwhile, let’s go see if we can catch this Sanders dude. He’s the last person Rosie talked to and a piece that doesn’t
fit.”


“Sure,” Dani said, trying not to react. Relax. Russell Sanders wouldn’t know her, and the Foundation’s namesake, James Mitchell
Sheridan, was—as always—overseas. The only thing to think about now was finding Rosie’s killer.


Dani drove from the park, got stuck in the wrong lane, and did a U-turn across a bed of flowers in the median. Tifton laid
on the horn behi