Page 6 of Traitor

Days…hours…minutes…seconds. All spent without her.

Even though Josué and Isaac were convinced it was a bad idea, I returned to work immediately. No one knew about Monica and bringing her up now would’ve only raised questions that I wasn’t sure I knew how to answer.

The first week there’d been this alternation between grief and rage. I’d almost accepted the police theory that it was an overdose. It was easier for my heart to take. I told myself that I should’ve known—once an addict, always an addict.

Once I was calm, I asked to see her body and then I knew the truth. Whoever had killed her had been powerful enough to silence, not only the entire police department, but the coroner’s office as well.

Brynn had been right—she did look like she was asleep. And I would’ve left thinking that she’d let me down again, were it not for the sudden urge to hold her hand one last time.

It was what I’d wanted to do when she told me that she’d been arrested—drive down to the station and sit with her hand in mine until the whole mess was sorted out.

I tried to ignore the gray pallor of her skin as I’d pulled her hand from beneath the papery blue sheet. That was when I knew, without a doubt, that my mother had been murdered. Her fingernails had been broken off, leaving behind a mess of bloody nail beds. I’d immediately snatched the other hand only to find similar damage.

When I brought it to the coroner’s attention, he’d simply stated that addict’s hands always looked bad.

Not Monica’s.

Never Monica’s.

Within hours of being released, she’d been found five blocks from the police station with clear defensive wounds on her hands, yet no one was looking into it.

No one seemed to think that her death seemed suspicious.

No one but me.

Dara leaned into my office. “Lauren, I’m still waiting on that order from last week. Dr. Mulloy wants you to call them and see what the problem is.”

Shit.

I’d written it on a Post-It note. I began shuffling huge stacks of paper from one side of the desk to the other, praying that the order was buried somewhere in there.

Had I thrown it away?

She gave me a strange look. “Are you okay?”

I nodded absently, while tearing apart my desk. “Uh huh. Tell Doc that it’s being taken care of.”

Before she could say anything else, I pushed the office door closed with my foot and dropped my head down on my desk, sending several more stacks off of it and onto the floor.

I was losing my ever-loving mind.

Giving me a giant middle finger, my brain conjured up his face.

Mike.

My stomach gave a lurch and I slowly inhaled and exhaled until the nausea passed. There was a light knock on the door before Elizabeth poked her head in. “Hey,” she said softly. “Is everything okay?”

She’d just come back from maternity leave, having taken a couple of extra weeks to be at the hospital with Kaden. He was still in the NICU, so she was going to be spending her every free moment there until they could release him.

I mashed my lips into a thin line to stop them from trembling before shaking my head.

She slipped in and closed the door behind her. “What happened? Is it Mike?”

Was it?

I’d been so immersed in my grief that I didn’t even know the specifics of it anymore.

The words were right there on the tip of my tongue. I wanted to blurt them out…to unburden my soul, if only temporarily. Could I do that to a woman who’d gone through her own hell though? Could I tell her about my mother and what I suspected or would doing so make her a target?

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