Page 33 of Over Her Dead Body

It starts vibrating before the lock screen fully loads. The eleven messages have multiplied. Most are from Margot.

I read enough to confirm what the clock already told me. The viewing has started. Bauer asked for me. Margot is running out of explanations.

I open the airline app, pour a cup of coffee, and book the first workable flight home. It leaves in four hours. I put the fare on my own card. The firm has financed enough of this mistake.

By the time I take my first sip, I have a confirmation number and a car arriving in seven minutes.

Coffee in hand, I open a pair of narrow French doors and step onto a balcony barely deep enough for my feet.

Lisbon is awake. Tile rooftops in every direction. A woman two buildings over is hanging laundry on her railing. Someone is making espresso nearby. A church bell rings once, then leaves it at that.

My driver is six minutes away.

I drink half the cup, lean on the railing, and look down at the street.

That is when I see him.

CHAPTER 13

EMMA

He is half a block away, stepping out of a building with a green door and a stone façade. Not coming around the corner with coffee or bread or any of the ordinary things a man might mean by back soon.

Reid is wearing the white shirt I unbuttoned a few hours ago.

At first, I think the dark across the front is shadow.

Then he steps into the sun.

Blood covers one cuff and streaks the shirt from ribs to waist, wet enough in places to shine.

My brain offers several explanations.

None survive the next second.

My stomach turns. Coffee rises into my throat, and I force it back down. The cup is still in my hand, my fingers locked around it.

He wipes one hand against his shirt and slides something narrow and dark into his waistband.

A knife.

Then he turns and starts walking away from me, away from the apartment. He does not run or even hurry. He moves with the untroubled pace of a man who has just finished an ordinary errand.

A man who has done this before. A man for whom this is a thing one does.

He does not look up.

He reaches the corner and disappears.

For a moment, I cannot move.

The flight is booked. My car is five minutes away.

Before I looked over the railing, I was leaving because he was a liar. Now I am leaving because lying might be the least dangerous thing about him.

I do not know who the blood belongs to. But I do know that I am not going to find out from him.

I set the cup down and go inside.