The words practically jumped off the paper at her.
Livvy, it’s time you remembered. Time for you to confess that you’re a killer.
Chapter Two
Ethan set the cup of water on the desk next to Livvy. “Drink this,” he insisted.
He seriously doubted that mere water was going to put any color back in Livvy’s cheeks. Or eliminate that shock he was seeing in her pale green eyes. In fact, nothing might help with that, but he had to try anyway.
This wasn’t about the stress that her anxiety was putting on the baby. It was about Livvy herself. They might not have been the best of friends as they once were, and he might’ve felt the guilt from hell just looking at her, but Ethan hated to see her hurting like this.
And she was hurting, no doubt about it.
All thanks to the blasted note that had shaken her to the core. It’d shaken him, too, but Ethan was trying to push it aside and help Livvy deal with…well, whatever the heck this was.
“The note could be a lie, meant to taunt you,” he pointed out. Not for the first time. He’d said as much in the cruiser when Grace had told them to leave the crime scene, return to the station and wait for her in her office. But now Ethan added more. “As a cop, you’ve made enemies, and one of them might want to hurt you.”
If that was it, then the enemy had succeeded.
Livvy, it’s time you remembered. Time for you to confess that you’re a killer.
Yeah, definitely a success.
Because of the best-friends deal that had started when they were both six and in foster care, Ethan knew how much her blank past haunted her. Or a better word for it might’ve beenterrorizedher. Not just the nightmares but those empty spaces inside her that should’ve been filled with memories and certain knowledge.
But she didn’t have that.
In fact, even her name was something that’d been given to her by the foster care system after they hadn’t been able to identify her or locate any possible kin. Now she had to be imagining the worst-possible scenarios for those blanks.
That she was a killer.
That at age six, she had ended someone’s life.
“You need to make a list,” Ethan said, trying again to get her to focus on anything but those blank spots, the dead woman and the note. “Write down anyone you think might want to get back at you by doing something like this.”
He took a notepad from Grace’s desk and dropped it and a pen next to the cup of water. Livvy finally looked up at him. “You think someone murdered a woman to get back at me?”
“It’s possible,” he had to admit. “But there are many reasons the woman could have been killed.”
She drank some water and nodded. “But one of the reasons for her murder could point right back to me,” Livvy said, and her voice cracked. “I didn’t kill her, Ethan.”
He looked at her as if she’d just told him she was an alien from Mars. “Hell, Livvy. I know that.” Ethan groaned and put his hands on his hips.
“But will everyone else believe it?” she asked.
And there it was. Something he hadn’t considered. The worry that because of that note, people would think she was a killer.
Ethan leaned down, took hold of her shoulders and looked her straight in the eyes. “No one who knows you will think you killed that woman.”
She stared at him as if trying to detect any doubts about that. There wouldn’t be any. He knew her down to her soul, and the only reason that best friends’ bond no longer applied was because of him. Because of the mistake he’d made landing in bed with her on the first anniversary of his wife’s death.
Isabel’s death.
He’d been in such a dark place that night. The grief had been eating him alive, and he’d turned to Livvy. The grief was still there and felt as if it always would be, but he now had a mountain of guilt to go along with it. Guilt over “betraying” his late wife and twisting Livvy’s life to hell and back by getting her pregnant.
Oh, she wanted this baby. He had no doubts about that either. He wanted it as well. But that didn’t mean it hadn’t given them both the unplanned upheaval of becoming parents. Parents who were both haunted by their pasts.
Ethan realized his gaze was still locked with Livvy’s. And that he still had hold of her shoulders. Was very close to her. So close that he felt that blasted heat stir in him. He practically snapped back, putting some much-needed distance between them.
