Page 6 of No Sweet Goodbyes

“Kitchen’s through here,” Linc whispers. I follow him down the hall, making sure to keep my gun up but not pointed at my friend.

When Linc steps over the threshold from carpet to linoleum, his boot hits something wet, and the subconscious wince that tears through my body at the realization of what we have to be walking into hits me like a freight train at the same time that I smell copper in the air.

“They’re both dead.” Linc sighs as he speaks, holstering his gun and turning back with a grim expression.

“Holy shit,” I mutter, stepping into the room and watching my step as I go.

We don’t want to contaminate anything that may need to be investigated, but I do need to see what’s going on.

Yeah, they’re both dead, alright. And there’s no question what happened. She’s got a gunshot wound, and there’s blood everywhere, surrounding her body as well as his body across the room.

The woman, one I’ve seen around town occasionally, is gorgeous, even in death. Her lifeless blue eyes stare up at the ceiling while her blond hair pools around her head, soaking up the blood still seeping from her chest.

Not ready to give up on her, I press my fingers to her neck and check for a pulse.

Nothing but my own heartbeat and the absence of life as Linc moves behind me, doing the same thing for the man who killed his wife.

“Gun,” he announces, and I hear the clear sound of metal scraping the floor and the chamber of the gun being checked. “How the hell does it get to this level?” Linc pulls the radio from his chest again and calls in the update to the situation while I ponder his question. “They kill each other rather than walk away?”

There’s blood on her hands, and fear written forever in her eyes. She didn’t want to die.

Over my shoulder, I notice the bloody knife that sits on the ground next to the dead man, and I know he pulled it out himself.

“She stabbed him,” I note. “And then he shot her.” It’s only speculation at this point, but I’d put money on it. “I wonder what drove them to this moment.” My heart aches for the little girl they left behind.

The list of things I have to do is a mile long and growing by the second, but when I step out of the house to catch my breath and see Emma staring at me from her doorway, everything fades away.

At least for a second.

I can see the pain in her eyes, and she knows it isn’t good. There’s not going to be any waking up from this nightmare for the little girl she’s taking care of.

We stand like that, two lost souls, watching each other for a solid minute, not looking away. Lost in the stolen moment until Linc comes up behind me and offers an apology.

“Hell of a way to welcome you back to Birch Harbor, man.”

I blink, and Emma’s just gone. If I didn’t know any better, I would think I completely imagined her being there.

I don’t have time to think about the fact that she makes me crazy.

But even as I force myself to think about the job I need to do, the bodies in the house that deserve my full attention, the answers I have to find, she’s still there.

While we catalog and sort evidence.

While we process everything in the kitchen and collect every single piece of their lives.

Emma’s there in the front of my mind, even when she shouldn’t be.

“Someone’s gotta tell Emma,” I tell Linc when the coroner pulls up to the house a little while later.

I want to be the one, as stupid as I know that would sound to her brother. I want to be the one to tell her, to offer the comfort she’s going to need.

The person she seeks in her darkest moment.

But she isn’t mine.

Not yet.

3

---