Brody and Trent get up, but Dev shrugs.

“Dev,” Drake says. “You took her stalker call. We might need you.”

“All right.” He gets up without argument and follows the other guys to the door.

I kiss Dad’s cheek. “I’ll call you later. Promise.”

He taps my arm. “I know.”

I follow Drake out of the house and to his truck. He holds the door open for me, and I sit, but then I pause before he shuts it.

“Why do I get the feeling this isn’t as simple as her stalker being her killer?”

“Because murder is rarely simple.” He shuts the door and walks around the truck. When he’s in and the engine has started, he continues. “Are you working tomorrow?”

“I wasn’t planning on it.” I guess it looks like I have to change my plans.

“You are now,” he says, confirming my suspicions. “Natalie’s house hasn’t been searched yet. I want us there early tomorrow. Then we’ll interview Madison and the mayor and try to track Nick Lucas.”

There’s an ‘and.’

“Do you have a new tech guy?”

“I was going to call the last guy I interviewed on Monday and offer him the job.”

“Have Grecia do it tomorrow. I think he’ll be needed first thing on Monday if my suspicions are correct.”

“You’re being very cryptic, Detective, and I don’t like it.”

He smiles, looking at me. “Trust me. It’s about to make a whole lot more sense.”

He pulls up outside the station and parks in his usual spot. My brothers are right behind us in Dev’s truck, and they part next to us in Trent’s spot.

Drake takes my hand and holds it while I get out of his truck. He really needs to get a smaller truck or get me a stepping stool or something. I think it’s a borderline monster truck.

I pull my hand from his as my brothers get out of Dev’s truck. I mean, it’s weird. Plus, he is Trent’s closest friend.

God, that really is weird, isn’t it?

Drake doesn’t take offense though, merely shaking his head with an amused smirk on his face. I look away, nowhere near as amused as he is, and drop back to walk with Brody.

“It’s hilarious when you get embarrassed,” he whispers with light laughter.

“Shut your face,” I mutter.

Dear teenage me, the whole relationship thing doesn’t get easier. They lied. Love, adult Noelle.

We take the stairs down to the converted basement, where Tim is, and instantly, I’m hit with the smell of death. It’s rancid and awful, and I force myself to breathe through my nose instead of my mouth. I hate the morgue. I always have. Knowing that beyond a door or two are the dead bodies of people stuffed into freezers has always seriously bothered me.

Tim is sitting at the desk in his office, holding his glasses to the side and pinching the bridge of his nose. He isn’t a particularly young man, anyway—fifty-something. But right now, he looks like he should have retired ten years ago.

“Excellent,” he says tiredly, looking up with gray eyes. “Is it party time?”

“When at Bond family dinner,” I tease.

“Should have guessed.” He smiles. “Take a seat…if you can all fit.”

His office is tiny and packed with papers and various things I don’t really care for—like that model of a torso with half of it showing its organs. Or the brain I seriously hope is fake in a jar. Or that hand curved on top of the bookshelf, which I also hope is fake.

Long story short, this is my first visit to Tim’s office, and it’s probably gonna be my last.

Drake grabs my shoulders and propels me into one of the chairs in front of Tim’s desk while Brody takes the other. Drake stays standing behind me, leaning forward, with his hands on the back of my chair.

“Tell them what you told me,” he orders, his voice gentler than normal.

Tim rubs the bridge of his nose once more before putting his glasses on. Then he looks at us all in turn, one by one. “Natalie Owens was murdered without a shadow of a doubt. While it isn’t uncommon for autoerotic asphyxiation users to accidentally take it too far, it rarely happens with a partner. With her hands and feet bound, she was completely powerless to whoever strangled her under the guise of that particular fetish.” He opens a brown envelope and pulls some Polaroid photos out. “She suffered numerous lashes to her body, some of which opened up old welts from previous whippings. Whoever Natalie was in public was not who she was in private, as is typically the case.”

More photos are laid out, these ones under UV light.

“There are clear signs of sexual activity before her death. Ninety-nine percent of it is internal, but there are very light traces of semen on her stomach and thighs, which have been sent for DNA testing. Of course, that doesn’t mean that whoever she slept with killed her.”

“Sounds like it could have been anyone,” Brody remarks.

“It could have. But we have more. I pulled skin from beneath her fingernails and swabbed in and around her mouth for saliva traces. The chances of us getting a DNA match for at least her last sexual companion is high, and they are likely to be her killer.”

“Would they really be that careless though? To let her touch them and not clean her?” I ask.

“It could have been an opportunistic moment,” Drake explains, brushing his thumb across the space between my shoulder blades. I fight my shiver. “She was there… Tied… Too easy. If it were premeditated, then no, her killer wouldn’t have allowed her to touch them at all.”

“So, what does this mean?” Trent leans forward. “We have nothing to go on except a definite murder charge until we get the DNA results?”

“Which might not even show anything conclusive,” Tim concedes. “But no. That’s not all. You have another huge factor that threw me.” He scoots his chair back and pulls another envelope from her drawer. “The first thing I did was draw blood from her and send it to Austin for testing with a rush from Judge Barnes. The results were…interesting.”

“You didn’t tell me this.” Drake’s thumb stills.

“No.” Tim removes sheets of paper stapled together in the corner. “I was surprised, given the lashings she’d taken. I expected to see high alcohol or drug levels. Perhaps even poison, but I saw none of that. What she did have was an extremely high level of hCG in her blood.”

I take a deep breath.

“What is that?” Dev asks. “Like a legal drug or something?”

“No,” Tim says simply. “Natalie Owens was four months pregnant.”

I pick at the banana muffin in front of me. I haven’t eaten a thing since last night. After we left Tim, Drake gave me a ride home and left me at my front door with nothing more than a peck on my cheek and a reminder that he’ll be here at seven a.m.

It’s seven fifteen and I’m still waiting. He’d be late to his own funeral given half a chance. Actually, screw half. Give him the sniff of the possibility of a chance and he’d be late.

I hit his name on my call list and tap the speaker button, still aimlessly picking bits of banana out of the muffin and dropping them down onto the open wrapper. It rolls over to voicemail as the sound of a truck rumbles outside. I sit up straight and peek over my windowsill, and when I see his truck, it’s the first time in my life that I’ve been thankful to walk away from cake.

I grab my purse and cell, set my alarm, and lock my door behind me. Dark sunglasses shield Drake’s eyes from the sun peeking out from behind the clouds low in the sky, and the tight set of his jaw tells me that he’s pissed.

Oh, goodie.

“Morning,” I say softly, closing the door to the truck.

He grunts a reply.

“You were up all night, weren’t you?”

He shrugs and starts the engine again.

I put my hand over his and he stills, turning his face toward mine slightly.

“Have you had coffee?” I ask. “Breakfast? I have muffins inside.”