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PROLOGUE

MINA

Thirty minutes ago, I ruined my life.

How could I ever explain what I had done?

When the sirens stopped, it felt strange. Wrong. Their searing blare had matched the adrenaline coursing through me. That sound meant action. Urgency. When it stopped, it felt like a free fall. Nobody ever tells you what comes next when help arrives. Nobody ever tells you that sometimes it gets worse.

Now that those sirens had gone silent, I could hear my own thoughts again. Feel my own heartbeat.

There were voices. Shouts. Someone screamed. It might have been me. Now, I could only focus on the sticky, wet blood on my hands. When I unclenched my fists, only the lines of my palms split through that awful color. No wonder he hated it so much. He was right. Red was the color of hell.

A bright light shone on my face. I squinted. It felt like my head might explode. The tremors came back. My teeth chattered from the cold. Nothing could keep me warm. My clothes were soaked. My hair was drenched.

I sat sideways in the open door of one of the patrol cars. Its owner, Deputy Lennon, was once a friend. Now, I saw doubt in her eyes. But she’d been kind. As I shivered, she put a blanket around my shoulders, for all the good it did.

Red hands. Drying blood. I splayed my fingers out and turned my palms over, holding them up into the glare of someone’s flashlight. They wouldn’t let me wash my hands. They took photographs of them. I knew they would take many more.

Beside me, two paramedics slammed the doors hard shut on one of the ambulances. The other ambulance sat waiting on the front lawn, its doors still wide open.

The paramedics hustled to the cab, climbed in, and peeled out of my driveway. I shielded my eyes and watched it go. There came those sirens again. I longed to follow the sound. They weren’t going to let me. I knew how this worked.

A moment later, two more paramedics came out wheeling a second stretcher. My throat ran dry. They took the steps carefully. Gently bringing the stretcher to solid ground. I couldn’t take my eyes off the black body bag resting on top of it. They rolled it right past me, headed for the second ambulance.

My mind became a kaleidoscope of images, flickering behind my eyes. I watched body bags rolling out of so many houses. Victims beneath plastic. Unable to speak. Knowing I would become their voice. A mother’s only son, gunned down after a drug deal gone wrong. He would have been the first in his family to go to college. Lifeless eyes. The young woman who swore to herself if he ever laid a hand on her again, she would leave him. Her desperate family had tried to warn her for years. The teenage boy who’d never taken anything stronger than ibuprofen until one awful night at a frat house when he wanted to fit in. His “friend” gave him a pill laced with fentanyl and had been too afraid to call 911 when he started to convulse.

I had been the one to deliver justice for those victims. For their families. Always knowing it could never heal the wounds in their hearts. Who would find justice for what happened tonight? Who would speak for me? How could I ever make up for what was lost?

“Mina!”

His voice jarred me. Impatient. Angry. My head felt sluggish. I could barely focus on the man standing in front of me. A man I’d known and respected for five years.

I had nothing to say. There was nothing I could say. Even now, the lawyer in me managed to function.

“Mina,” he said again, softer. “You need to tell me what happened. All of it. I can’t help you if you don’t.”

How many times had I heard some cop say those exact words? How many times had I heard it from this cop? Help me, help you. Confess your sins. I’m your friend. I’m here for you. How many times had I stood in court arguing to a judge there’d been no coercion? The bad guy confessed of his own free will.

Now, I was the bad guy.

“Go away, Roy,” I said, my voice sounding foreign to me.

“Look at you,” he said, his anger coming back. “Look around you. You didn’t have to do this.”

I stared at his shoes. He wore black steel-toed boots even with his dark blue suit. Always ready to kick some door in. His detective’s badge swung from his neck. Slowly, I lifted my gaze to meet his.

“Go away,” I whispered. In the distance, I could still hear the sirens from the fleeing ambulances. One of them carried away the life that was supposed to be mine.

He leaned down and grasped my shoulders, shaking me forcefully. Trying to snap me back to reality. They would tell me I was in shock. But they would judge me anyway.

“Mina,” he said again. “Start talking.”

I squirmed away from his grasp. Slowly rising, I let the blanket fall from my shoulders.

“We both know this only ends one way,” I said.

He pursed his lips. What was that flash in his eyes? Sympathy? Frustration? Resignation?