Sheila nudged the male detective on the shoulder and gestured for him to stand. As he did, she slid into his seat and was across from us now. Leaning forward, she placed her hands on the table. They were open, her palms pointing toward us.

I don’t know why that movement was important, but it was. She wasn’t closed off to us. She was there. She was present with us. She was open to us. She was trying to help us.

She said further, and Bryce pulled away to sit back up, “Maria was obsessed with Guadalupe. You know this. Everyone does. It was very well documented the lengths she would go for her and like the text messages that you found on her phone, she’s the one who killed Grace Barton. We now have further proof. They were at the hospital. They overheard that Grace was confessing about being the one who had shoved Sheldon into the glass table. That gave them information and also a motive. They decided together to frame Sheldon, and they did it, because they thought she would go away, and you, Bryce, would return to Guadalupe. That’s her motive for the first death.”

I flinched at that term. ‘First death.’ It was said so coldly and . . . like a cop would say. Detached. But I knew that wasn’t true. Sheila was bracing him for the rest of it. Grace was dead. We all knew that, now onto the next death and the next blow.

“The night you guys went to Guadalupe’s hotel room, she called the police to her room. She pressed charges against Maria. She wanted a restraining order against her.”

“Why?”

That one word from him sounded so bleak.

“She said they fought after Sheldon’s press conference. And there was a red mark on her cheek, so we arrested Maria, and a restraining order was set into place. However, we don’t think that was the real reason she wanted charges brought up against her assistant. We think it was her first step in distancing herself from Maria. We think Guadalupe knew there was going to be blowback toward her. Sheldon’s press conference worked like magic. People were becoming more sympathetic to her, but people were going to analyze us more and she knew that eventually we’d start asking more questions. We would get to them, eventually. That’s what we think happened; why she called, but all we know for certain is that there had been a fight. The hotel staff confirmed that. They were called with complaints about yelling and what sounded like a physical altercation.”

“Shit,” Corrigan breathed out. He shook his head. “This is unreal, being told this.” He glanced to me.

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I was holding onto Bryce’s hand, but I was clinging to my chair with the other. Was it actually real? Was it really done?

I was scared to hope.

“We think when Maria realized the object of her obsession was turning on her, she felt rejected, and this sent her into a tailspin of panic and rage. Like I said, Miss Connors is here. She can explain it so much better, but like a lot of stalkers do with their objects of obsession, Maria turned on Guadalupe. If she couldn’t have her, no one could. Many stalkers end up killing, or attempting to kill, the person they were obsessed with. We found her body this morning in a warehouse.”

Another warehouse. The irony wasn’t lost on us, considering what we’d been doing hours earlier.

Bryce lowered his head. Again, like this whole time, he didn’t say anything, but he was taking shallow breaths, and I knew he was trying to calm himself. Either that or he was just trying to breathe.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Keep repeating and maybe something would make sense at the end? Sometimes that happened. Once I calmed down, I understood things, but that wasn’t going to happen here.

Guadalupe was dead, and he couldn’t tune out, then come back in and hope it was a nightmare. She was gone.

I pressed my hand to his arm again. This wasn’t a nightmare. It was real life.

Everyone was waiting for us to say something, Bryce or myself. Corrigan was waiting, too. As we locked eyes, a look passed between us. I had to be with Bryce that night. He was grieving, and in a weird way, so was I. They had found Grace’s murderer.

I needed Bryce that night, and I tried to send Corrigan an apology, but he shook his head. He understood. I got the message he sent me back, and the corner of my mouth lifted up, but I couldn’t smile. Like Bryce, I was defeated, too.

I wanted it all to end.

Then Corrigan asked, “Where is Maria? Do you have her in custody?”

They didn’t reply.

I looked at Sheila, alarm filtering inside me.

This was the ‘worse’ part. None of the cops looked at each other. There was no question. This was what they were bracing themselves for and, feeling my stiffening, Bryce looked up, too.

“Do you?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

Sheila looked right at me and said, “No.”

Chills went down my back. “What do you mean ‘no’?”

“We found Guadalupe’s body, but not Maria. She’s on the run.”

“But.” Corrigan jerked forward. His hand rested on the table, curling into a fist. “Again. What does that mean for us?”

“We have reason to believe that Maria is going to honor Guadalupe’s death with one last act.”

Oh god.

My mouth went dry.

Sheila sighed. “She’s going to try to kill Sheldon.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

And we were back to the very beginning.

Sheila dropped that bomb, and the song from The Sound of Music started playing in my head. Of course. Made total sense. I was going to die one of these days anyway.

Corrigan shoved back his chair and demanded, “What? Where is she?”

Bryce stood too, but slower and he was still holding my hand. Me? I did nothing. I sat and kept quiet because I already knew what was going to happen. As I thought it, Sheila said it, “She’s going to have to go back into protective custody.”

Which I already was, sort of. Kinda. I was hiding anyway.

“No.”

Corrigan agreed with Bryce. “No way.”

“We stay at Denton’s. He lives in a gated community, and he has his own gate. We have security there already. Sheldon’s dad is still there. Have your officers stay there. Put some outside the first gate and some outside Denton’s gate. Hell,” Bryce bit out. “Put a car on the inside, too. She doesn’t leave. She stays where it’s safe.”

“You don’t know where Maria is at all?” That question came from me. I remembered staring her in the eye. I remembered seeing how crazy she was, but she hadn’t been intent on killing me then. No. A sick laugh sounded in my head. She only wanted me to go to prison. She killed my friend to do that. My friend.