She was eager to hear what had come of McBride and Tyrone’s trip to Lori Phillips’s church, and she wanted to know if Arnold had found anything more in the text messages from Lori’s phone.

The doorbell chimed inside the house while Sam waited on the stoop. She was about to ring the bell again when Edna opened the door. “Hello again.”

“Mrs. Springer asked me to stop by again. Could I speak to her, please?”

Edna glanced nervously over her shoulder. “Um, yes, come in.”

“Is everything all right?”

“Yes.” Edna stepped back, still holding the door, so Sam could walk into the house.

As she crossed the threshold, Sam was hit by one of her gut feelings. I shouldn’t be here by myself. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. I’ve broken all my own rules.

The click of a gun engaging only cemented her suspicions.

“Close the door, Edna, and lock it,” Marissa said. “Right now.”

Edna began to cry. “Miss Marissa, don’t do this. You don’t want to do this.”

Marissa put a bullet between the eyes of Edna Chan, who fell to the floor.

Her ears ringing from the blast, Sam had to leap out of the way or Edna would’ve taken her down with her. “What the fuck?”

“Put your gun on the floor and kick it over here.”

Furious with herself for fucking this up so royally, Sam stared down the other woman, looking for a hint of fear or nerves or anxiety. All she saw was calm, cool resolve. This was not good. Due to the TV appearance first thing, Sam had failed to wear her clutch piece on her leg the way she usually did while working a case, so she’d be completely disarmed if she handed over her gun. “What’s going on here, Marissa?”

“You’re done asking questions. I’m in charge now. Kick your gun over here or I’ll shoot your knee. You’ve got five seconds. Four, three, two...”

“Fine.” Sam withdrew her gun from the back of her skirt and thought for a second about trying to get a shot off. But even with the safety disengaged as it was whenever she was on duty, she’d be dead in the time it took to pull her weapon. Instead, she put it on the floor and kicked it in Marissa’s direction. “What happened between the last time I was here and now?”

“Nothing. You did exactly what we expected you to do. You went to talk to James and then you came back here when I asked you to. This time we’re ready for you.”

“Who’s we?”

“You’ll find out soon enough. Come with me.”

This was ridiculous, Sam thought as she walked toward Marissa. She could kick this woman’s ass, and Marissa was actually holding her hostage? Did she dare try to kick the gun out of her hand? The thing that stopped her was the way Marissa had dropped Edna with a perfect shot. That indicated a certain level of expertise.

“What do you want with me?”

“Enough with the questions.”

“Um, you’re holding a gun on me, and I’m not supposed to ask why?”

“You know why.”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking.”

The look Marissa gave her was positively venomous. “I blame you for my son’s death.”

“Which one?”

“Billy! Your incompetence led to my son’s death, and you’re going to pay for that.”

“So let me get this straight. You’re taking me hostage because I built a case against your son that went bad when he took hostages?”

Marissa leaned in closer to her. “No, I’m going to kill you because you and your band of incompetents ruined my life.”

In that moment, the shock seemed to pass and reality set in. Unless someone missed her and figured out where she was, she was going to die in this house where so many others had already died.

Shit fuck damn hell.

Marissa marched her down the basement stairs. Sam immediately noticed the pool table, where they’d found drug paraphernalia and empty vodka bottles the night of the murders, had been removed. The bloodstained carpet remained, however, and every surface was still smudged with the fingerprint powder Crime Scene detectives had left behind. Sam wondered how Marissa could bear to live in the house with all these reminders of her son’s violent death.

“Sit.” Marissa gestured with the gun to a wooden chair in the middle of the room.

Keeping a wary eye on the gun, Sam did as directed. “So what’s the plan, Marissa? How long are you planning to keep someone the entire police department will be looking for in a matter of minutes?”

“I told you to shut up, and I meant it.”

“You have to know they’ll be looking for me.”

“You’re so arrogant. Prancing around town like you own this city. Your husband is vice president, and you forgo Secret Service because you don’t think you’ll need it. How funny is that now? Taken hostage by a housewife. I wonder what your husband would pay to get you back?”

All the money in the world, Sam thought, saddened at the thought of him hearing she was in danger when there was nothing she could do to reassure him. She couldn’t think of him—or Scotty or the rest of her family—or she’d lose her composure. She needed to stay focused on Marissa and the gun and trying to figure out what she hoped to accomplish.

Sam had far too much to live for to let a frustrated housewife be the end of her.

When Sam was seated in the wooden chair, Marissa pulled a phone from her pocket and made a call. “I got her to come back,” Marissa said while Sam tried to figure out who she was talking to. “Get over here. Now.” She ended the call and returned the phone to her pocket.

Then she began to pace back and forth in the space where the pool table used to be. She never took her eyes off Sam, who sat perfectly still while watching Marissa’s every move. How had she misjudged this woman and this situation so completely? Sam had made a career out of trusting her instincts and following her gut. Both had let her down in this situation. She’d gotten no sense of violent tendencies during her initial visit with Marissa, but she should’ve taken what James told her about Marissa to heart before coming back here alone. She’d been in too big of a rush to think it all the way through, and she was paying for that now.

“Could I use the bathroom?” Sam asked.

“No.”

“So I should just pee right here?”

“If that’s what you’ve got to do.”

Sam hadn’t really had to go, but once she was told she couldn’t, she needed to go urgently. She chalked that up to nerves. She was in a bad spot. No two ways around it, but she’d been in bad spots before, such as the time she’d walked in on a robbery in progress at a convenience store and managed to neutralize the shooter and save a few lives—including her own.

Then there was the time her malicious ex-husband had gotten the big idea to bomb her car—and Nick’s. When hers had detonated, she’d been hurled against the brick-front townhouse where Nick had lived then. He’d been hit by flying glass, but they’d both survived. They’d been run off the road by some gangbangers, looking to use them to score initiation points. He’d broken ribs and she’d had a severe concussion, but they’d both walked away.

The week of her wedding, a perp had shot at her from a second floor window. Freddie had anticipated the shot, jumped on her and got her out of the way of the bullets, but not before her head connected with a huge rock, giving her yet another concussion.

Thinking about all the times she’d been through worse than this and come through fine boosted her confidence in this situation. What was one slightly crazy woman with a gun against a seasoned cop who’d overcome all that? If only she knew who Marissa had called and what they were planning. Did they want to take the vice president’s wife hostage to make headlines? She immediately dismissed that angle because Marissa had indicated this was about revenge for Billy’s death. It was about discrediting the department—and her.