Page 55 of Ace

He doesn't.

"I wanted to talk to you about this," he begins, wishing he wasn't about to sound like some skeezy used-car salesman. "We think it's best if you don't tell them."

"I can't bury my sister and grieve alone," she says, immediately rejecting his suggestion.

"I'm not asking you to do anything alone. Just that you postpone it. We were hoping that you could go home, invite them to your house, and then we'll give the call or have someone come to the house to make the announcement. We want professionals to go over how people in her life respond to the news."

Her head shakes, but she doesn't speak as new tears track down her face.

"I know what I'm asking of you," Mike says.

"Do you?" she snaps. "I can hardly function knowing she's gone, but I'm supposed to go home and act like it hasn't happened while planning some damn dinner party?"

"We're not asking for a dinner party. I can leave it up to you how you want to get your brothers to the house."

"My brothers," she whispers. "I'm telling you, they didn't do this."

"Notthey," Mike says, making me want to once again pop him in the nose.

I don't know if there is a more sensitive way to handle this situation, but even I'm not impressed with the way he's handling it. It definitely makes me reconsider how I speak to people because it sucks being on this side of it.

"William specifically."

"So you want to announce her death to see if he responds how you expect him to?"

"It's a little more complicated than that, but yes. We'll make the announcement to get an initial response and then we'll explain what happened."

"You think it's smart to tell the person who you think hired her murderer that she was killed by a hitman?"

"We're going to lie. We'll say she was found deceased in a different way. We'll say she was found somewhere else," he explains.

"Because if he's confused, he'll be guilty?"

"Once again, it's a little more complicated than that, but yes. I'm not the one who will be watching for those micro-reactions, but someone who specializes in that will be."

"And these people will just happen to be in my house watching them?"

Mike gives her a weak smile. "We'd like to put cameras up in your house."

She pulls in a deep breath as if he's asking a lot and she's getting close to shutting the whole thing down.

"And if he doesn't react the way you expect a murderer to act?"

"We continue to investigate and pray that one day we can catch the Full Deck Killer before he creates many more victims."

"How does doing this help you catch him?" she challenges. "It sounds like you just want to nail my brother."

"He might know something about him that we don't know," Mike offers. "Your help in this is vital. If William isn't guilty, then we need to know that so we can move on."

She's silent for a long moment, and I clear my throat when Mike pulls in a breath, telling me that he's preparing to lay on another level of shit to the pile that has already been created.

Thankfully, he takes a hint and remains quiet.

"I'll do it," she whispers, straightening in her chair. "But only to prove that William had nothing to do with it."

"Thank you," Mike says, but I can see in his eyes that he thinks the complete opposite.

My hope, of course, would be that it wasn't William. Cora has been through enough, and to lose her sister and then lose her brother to a murder conviction would be just too much for anyone to handle.

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