“You can
feel free to stop by with breakfast any morning of the week. I promise I won’t
complain.”
He laughed at the comment and picked up one of the bacon
croissants. He took a bite. “Did you run this morning?”
She glanced out the window, not surprised it was still raining.
“I chose to bike indoors over getting soaked.”
“I don’t blame you.” He wiped his mouth. “How was your last
day in physical therapy?”
She turned back to him. “Worried about my overdoing it?”
“Maybe.” He took another few bites of his croissant, finishing
it off quickly.
“I passed, Jonas. I even did a ten-minute mile.”
“Not bad. You’ve worked hard these past couple months.” Jonas
grabbed a second croissant. “How are you sleeping?”
She avoided his gaze, focusing instead on her breakfast. “Why
the twenty questions?”
“Just making conversation.”
Right.
“I know I slept, because I dreamed a lot.” She kept her voice
even, not wanting him to worry about the nightmares that woke her up most
nights. Or the memories that refused to surface.
“The memories will come back eventually,” he said, reading
her mind. “Just give yourself some time.”
Except she’d given herself time, and three months hadn’t been
enough.
She waved her hand like it didn’t matter. “Stop worrying
about me, Jonas. I’ll get through this. It’s part of the risk we take every
day.”
Ironic, though, how she could chase a convicted felon halfway across the
country and end up with barely a scratch, and then turn around and get shot in
her own home. The place where she was supposed to be safe. It was part of the
reason she’d put her old house on the market and snatched up the property she’d
been eyeing in a different neighborhood. All new locks and double bolts on the
doors had helped ease her anxiety. Running scared wasn’t something she was used
to. She was the one who went after the criminals. Not the other way around.
But what she did know about the accident terrified her.
Whoever had shot her had also murdered her husband.
“I just wish whoever shot me wasn’t still out there,” she
said.
“We’ll find them,” he said.
“How? We have nothing.” She grabbed a napkin from the bar, wiped
the sticky sugar residue off her fingers, then eyed the spinach croissant
before picking it up. “No forensic evidence. No DNA or fingerprints. Even our
one eyewitness— yours truly—doesn’t have anything, and we know I was just a
couple feet from the shooter.”
At least that’s what she’d been told from the ballistics
report.
“You’re putting yourself under too much pressure.”
“No.” She shook her head while Jonas grabbed another
croissant and started eating it. “I need to remember. Luke has been dead for five
years, and I’m no closer to finding his killer than we were the day he was
murdered.”
She’d told Jonas some of the details of the day her husband
died. Luke had just finished a twelve-hour shift in the ER. He’d called her on
his way to the parking garage like he did almost every day. He said he would
pick up some takeout and meet her at home once she got off. She expected him to
be there when she pulled into the driveway. Instead, two officers from her
district office were waiting to give her the news that Luke had been shot twice
in the chest in the hospital parking garage.
For her, life was never the same again.
Madison ran her hand automatically across the four-inch scar
on her stomach, trying to focus on the spinach croissant she’d been nibbling.
She hadn’t told Jonas how many hours she spent going over
every scrap of evidence the authorities had collected on both Luke’s death and
the attempt on her life.
But all she’d found were dead ends. The only evidence they
had was a black rose left at the scene—mirroring the cryptic message someone
left on Luke’s grave every year—confirming in her mind that whoever had shot
her was the same person who’d killed Luke. But she had no idea what they
wanted. Or when they might strike again.
