“He and I went over our house with a fine-tooth comb, several times, looking for any scrap of evidence that someone else had been there that night. We found nothing. No sign of forced entry. Nothing stolen. No fingerprints, no fibers, nothing.
“The other thing was that Angela didn’t have a mark on her. No bruises or blood. No sign that she’d struggled. And Andrew had been left untouched. Which was a miracle, and like all miracles, I couldn’t explain it.”
He furrowed his brow. “I still can’t. All I know is that Angela wouldn’t have gotten into the car and started it voluntarily. Somebody compelled her to do it by threatening her that if she didn’t, the consequence would be a thousand times worse. Something unspeakable, unthinkable. Anathema.”
Dylan thought through all that. Assuming that he was right, and someone had come into the house and forced Angela to do something as heinous as to stage a suicide, why would he, or they, have spared the baby? She put the question to him.
He shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t know Andrew was in the house.”
“Maybe it was a mercy.”
His lips tightened. “If it was, it won’t be taken into account when I get my hands on the son of a bitch.”
She didn’t doubt that at all. Mitch Haskell was fresh out of mercy. “Monday night…” Then she drew herself up with a sudden realization. “That was only two nights ago.”
“When I busted in on you? Yeah, night before last.”
“Seems so much longer.”
It seemed longer because recollections of those few forbiddenmoments when he’d been holding her wrist hadn’t left her alone. Such a seemingly innocent action had created memorable sensations. Remembrances of them had taunted and tantalized her throughout her workday and when she was idle and alone. They were ever-present, there even when she slept, there when she woke up.
And now, despite the surrounding noisiness and commotion, she was reliving those moments when he’d felt her pulse, and his whisper had been a warm breath wafting across her face, and he was looking into her eyes. His had been hot and avid.
Just as they were now. “Seems longer to me, too, Dylan.”
That statement, spoken in a rough undertone, made it very difficult for her to force herself back into the present and the serious subject that had to be dealt with delicately. She took a sip of tea before picking up where she’d left off.
“As you were leaving Monday night, you told me that you believe two men were responsible for Angela’s death.”
He nodded.
“What motive would they have had?”
“To destroy me.”
“Why?”
“Retribution.”
“Then why didn’t they killyou?”
“I’ve thought on that a lot and have come to the conclusion that they considered death too lenient a punishment. Even if they’d tortured me first, death would have been a welcome reprieve. No, they wanted to hurt me in the worst possible way. They wanted my suffering to last for a long time. So far, they’ve succeeded.”
“Why such harsh retribution? What had you done to them?”
He was about to speak, but caught himself. “You can’tdisclose anything about your patients, right? Unless you’ve softened your policy on that.”
“I haven’t.”
“I didn’t think so. In the same way, I can’t talk about ongoing investigations.”
“Is the investigation into Angela’s death ongoing?”
“For me it is.”
“I understand your desire for answers, Mitch. I do. I only hope your quest for them doesn’t cause even greater damage. Please keep that in mind.”
“I will.”
