Page 7 of Sinful Sorrow

“Text me when you leave.” He drags his focus back to Aubree. “I’ll make sure you both eat before you fall on your faces.”

The crime scene techs grow a little louder, and the squeak and roll of a stretcher hitting the house’s not-so-lush carpet alerts us to what’s coming. So Tim releases Aubree’s arm and steps out of the way just as the stretcher moves into view.

“Let’s load her up,” I announce, shaking my head when he stalks away once more, his phone trilling and his hand dropping into his pocket to silence it. “I wanna get her on our slab before rigor sets in.”

s

ARCHER

“We have to tell her parents.” I stop beside the car and keep my voice down, so we’re not overheard by the nearby media. Meanwhile, police cruisers litter the haunted house’s lawn, each with a different player sitting in the back.

No one except Connor Samuels is in cuffs, but everyone is cooperating and willing to head down to the station. So I meet Fletch’s eyes across the roof of the car and lower my voice. “We’ve got a ticking time bomb. Maybe her parents aren’t watching the news. Maybe they are. But for every minute they don’t know, we risk a complete explosion when they find out from the likes of Miranda London down at Gossip-TV. She’s here, and she knows we’re homicide.”

“We’ll swing by their house before the station.” He dangles the car keys from his pointer finger and opens the door. “The Wallaces live only ten minutes from here. Get in and we’ll?—”

“Naomi?” A woman’s panicked screech brings me around on a skid. My hand drops to the gun holstered on my hip, then a heaving cry splits the sky when Minka’s stretcher breaches the front door and emerges to dozens of camera flashes. Then I’m moving, bolting across the lawn to intercept the woman who makes a beeline for the doctors. “No!” The woman screams. “Naomi!”

Minka comes to a sharp halt, standing in front of the stretcher and using her own fucking body as a shield. Officers converge, and her soulful eyes move to mine while I sprint. Then Tim steps out of the house, like a ghost, and places himself between the growing crowd and the women he would trade his life for.

With the doctors guarded, I change my trajectory and aim for the howling woman instead, catching her when she collapses and holding her weight when, otherwise, she would crumble to the ground. “My baby!” she sobs, crushing her face to my chest and banging her fists. “My little girl.”

“Shit.” I wave Fletch closer, then help lower the woman to the damp grass. To her backside, so she can rest, if only for a moment. Then I circle my hand and have a wall of uniforms surrounding us to shield us from the media, and Minka from the grieving mother. “Mrs. Wallace?” I swallow and crouch low enough to be on her level. And while the poor woman wails her sorrow, I mentally rearrange my plans.

No need to go to her house anymore.

“What happened?” Snot and saliva and tears mix on her splotchy red face. Her color is concerning, so I look up at the first set of eyes that meet mine. “Get us a medic,” I order the uniformed officer. “We need observation.” Then I bring my focus back down again and swallow the devastation bubbling in the air between us. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Mrs. Wallace.”

“It’s Naomi?” Her words crackle and break. Her breath, hitching. Her eyes are swollen, almost shut. But she forces them open. She makes damn sure I look into them. “It’s really my baby?”

“My partner and I were on our way to speak to you.” I ensure my voice is low. Loud enough for her to hear. But not so loud that all of Copeland get the 4K playback on their home televisions. “I’m so sorry to inform you, your daughter was killed tonight.”

“No.” She collapses in on herself. Her chest caving and her shoulders drooping. “It must be a mistake. Not my…” She stumbles over her words. “Not my Naomi. She can’t?—”

“Can we get you somewhere more comfortable?” I try instead. “Your home. Or the hospital. Or?—”

“My baby is gone?” She moves through her stages of grief. First, denial. That vehement refusal to acknowledge what may be true. Then to bargaining. “Are you sure it’s not?—”

“We have visual confirmation from four separate people. I’m so sorry, Mrs. Wallace.”

“But she’s…” she hiccups. “And the baby is…” Her eyes widen, then well with fresh tears. “The baby?”

“Is gone too.” I drag her head down to rest between her knees when her red skin turns a deathly white. A paramedic emerges on my left, his dark pants offset by a reflective line near his ankle. “I’m worried about her blood pressure,” I tell him. “She was crimson a moment ago. Now she’s pale. I don’t know if she’s gonna have a heart attack or pass out or something in between.”

“My baby,” she cries, though I think she moves through to the acceptance and comatose state. The kind where she simply repeats, over and over, her new reality. “Naomi is gone.”

“She probably needs to be admitted for a few hours. Get her hooked up and monitored. She just found out her daughter and grandchild have passed. So?—”

“Yes, Detective.” The paramedic sets his med bag—not too dissimilar to Minka’s… kind of—on the grass. “Ma’am?” He takes out a mask first, plopping it over her face and ensuring she’s getting air, then he grabs her hand and strategically places his fingers over the pulse point in her wrist. “Ma’am? Can you hear me? My name is Chris, and I’m gonna help you, okay?”

“Her name is Patricia Wallace.” I keep hold of her too-thin frame, so he can work without having to catch her. “She’s… you’re forty-one, right, Mrs. Wallace? That’s what my records told me just before we were getting in the car to come see you.”

“My daughter. She’s…”

“She’s forty-one,” I confirm with a nod. “She works in audiology as a doctor’s assistant. She lives in a two story on Weston. Married, three children. Naomi was her oldest, and Naomi,” I tilt my head as Minka and Aubree hurriedly work the stretcher down the steps of the house. “It’s fresh. We were heading her way to inform her, but she turned up here and this is where we’re at.”

“Arch?”

“Yeah.” I move when a second paramedic stops on my right, then I trade positions with him and allow Mrs. Wallace to be held up by a fresh pair of hands. Free, I push up to stand and turn to Fletch, though my eyes follow the doctors as they load Naomi’s body into the van and the media lights up the nighttime sky with their incessant photographs and footage. “Well, that didn’t go well.” Snarling, I fold my arms and lean to keep Minka in my sight as she moves around the side of the van. “We fuckin’ blew it.”

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