“Knew—” I knew her.
“Then, I’m sorry, but you can’t be here.”
I feel Rhys’s hand on my arm, steadying me. “We’re not working this case. We’re on the Delany cold case with the cold case division.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Dr. Keller says.
“Thank you,” I manage, but it feels wrong to accept his condolences. I hadn’t been Cam’s friend for a long time. Although, when you stretch the seams of time out, what length is considered a long enough time not to be someone’s friend?
I met Cameron freshman year. We were the same age. Both excited and scared and curious. Three years as college roommates, as best friends, then the world changed, and it’s been too many years since we’ve spoken.
Until yesterday.
What does that equate to?
Rhys and Dr. Keller are talking, muffled voices float to my ears. Then I catch one word more clearly than the others—one word that freezes my blood.
Baby.
Cam was pregnant.
Through my blurred vision, I study her shape. The flatness of her stomach. The missing swell of her belly that I was so envious over the day before.
“What happened?” I hear myself ask.
The ME looks to Rhys, silently conspiring what’s proper to reveal to me.
“I can handle it,” I say, forcing my voice steady.
Rhys takes my arm in a calm hold and faces me. I see it in his eyes then: the warning.
Implication.
He doesn’t express his fear aloud. He doesn’t have to. I was one of the last people to see Cam alive. I might’ve been the last person. Considering the timing, the call from Detective Vale might’ve been a ruse. Bring me in to discuss the cold case and corner me in an interrogation room.
My hands tingle. I can feel the blood draining from my extremities, adrenaline taking hold. My pulse quickens.
She’s dead because of me.
“The baby survived,” Dr. Keller says. “It’s extremely rare. A baby only survives inside the womb for mere minutes after the mother’s death.”
Relief floods me, and I nearly crumple to the floor. It only lasts a moment, though. Had I never gone to visit Cam, chances are, she’d still be alive. I know it in my bones that I was followed yesterday.
“How was that possible?” Rhys asks.
“I’m not working that side of it,” Dr. Keller says, “but I believe the police received a call-in. Paramedics arrived in time.”
In time to save the baby. But not Cam.
Who called it in?
“The victim’s femoral artery was severed,” Dr. Keller continues, giving his attention to the body. “That was the cause of death. She was stabbed eight times, but every laceration”—he points to the deep wounds on her chest—“was survivable on its own. I want to believe the perpetrator purposely missed exposing the fetus to any harm.”
The fetus. The way he says it…so technical…I swallow hard. I do the same; detach myself from the crime. In my case, I have to. I can’t identify with the victim. It’s too dangerous. Rhys has drilled this into me.
But this is Cam.
As I look at her pale body, lifeless, all the vibrant colors that made her alive drained from her flesh, I can’t remove myself. The terrible irony that Cam’s end was met with the fate that should’ve been mine…