Page 542 of Cold Case, Warm Hearts

I’m not sure how I know that, but it feels like the right answer. And, despite our history and my clear memory of her cold-hearted verdict against my muse, I feel a twinge at her distress.

Although, maybe the insurance is her seed money for her massive empire. A random and unlikely motive, but I tuck that information away, and return to the pictures spread out on the Camaro.

“Hey,” Burke says quietly. His tone makes me look up. He’s staring past me, toward Eve, but beyond. “See the guy in the neon green shirt?”

I glance at the man. Maybe in his late twenties, he’s well over six feet, with inky black hair and a dark gaze that is seared on Mariana.

“Does he look like this guy?” Burke points to a man in a shot at yesterday’s scene. The man in the picture is standing across the street from the bombing, holding a coffee cup.

Could be. Dark hair, and although he’s wearing a baseball cap in the picture, the face seems similar.

Everything inside me ignites.Please.

“Close enough,” I growl and in a breath I’m sprinting.

I shoot past Eve even as I hear Burke give a shout. But I’m not slowing down.

I want him. Just to question, to put the pieces together, but my gut is screaming—yes.

Maybe this, right here, is why I’m here. I still don’t know how, but maybe, cosmically, there is a God out there who follows my nightmares, the cold clench the past has on my life.

And maybe He’s dishing out do-overs.

Neon has spotted me and a spark of panic flashes across his unshaven face a second before he turns andruns.

See?Instincts.

The bugger is fast, has longer legs and is in shape.

But so am I. This younger me has chops and I’m churning up the sidewalk like a man on fire. “Stop!” I yell because I’m supposed to, right? But there’s not gonna be a response.

Neon doesn’t even glance over his shoulder as he motors down the sidewalk.

He passes Aldrich, Bryant, and cuts south on Colfax.

I motion to Burke, hopefully behind me, to keep going and I follow Neon between two houses, across an alley, and over to Dupont.

He crosses the median, to the honking of a car, and thinks he’s going to lose me in the cemetery.

Hardly. I ran track in high school. And I have my young lungs back.

Burke’s yelling behind me, but I’m not losing this guy. He’s agile and fast, as if used to running. That’s my brain already applying judgment, I know, but it fuels me as my lungs burn.

Lakewood Cemetery is 250 acres of mausoleums and headstones cluttered with trees and footpaths.

I know this place.

I gesture Burke to angle down the footpath while I veer right to cut off Neon. He heads across open ground, past an alley of headstones and markers, trampling over them with impunity.

Spotting Burke, he cuts right. Well, Burke would scare me, too, sprinting right at him like a defensive end.

But Neon ismyprey and when he trips over a marker, I leap.

He’s bigger, more solid, than I anticipate and shrugs me off even as we slam into the grass. I’m rolling and on my feet before he can find his. I take him down with a fist to the jaw.

My hand explodes, but Neon takes the hit like he’s expecting it. He shakes it off and lets out a curse.

“Get down!” I yell, but he’s not having it. Incredibly, he lunges at me.

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