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“Good,” said McCrae, his eyes fixed on Delta.
“I fell on the knife,” Delta said, looking at her palm and the deep scratch the serrated edge had made.
“Looks like a steak knife.” McCrae bent down to where Delta had dropped it. “It’s not one of yours?”
She shook her head even while her mind’s eye saw Tanner plucking it from their knife set in the wooden block on her counter.
That was her second lie.
* * *
The next several hours passed in a hellish blur. She drove to the ER at Laurelton General, where’d they’d taken Tanner, about twenty miles east of West Knoll. He was in a curtained cubicle in the ER when she got there. She was asked to stay in the waiting room. She half-expected to be hauled away for questioning by Quin and McCrae. The lie about the knife was eating her up. Why hadn’t she said it was from their set?
Because you touched it.
Yes, but now she was going to have to compound the lie. Get rid of the rest of the set. Amy and Tia would be able to say that Tanner had brought the knife to work, wouldn’t they? Or maybe they didn’t know.
It was ridiculous. She needed to straighten that out right away.
It’s always the spouse, though, isn’t it?
But Tanner just needed to get better! He could tell them what happened! He could tell them who had done this to him. Who had stabbed him over and over again.
Who was that?
Delta shivered. Someone had viciously attacked him. Someone was out there. She could see them . . . locking the back door from the inside . . . making it look like an outside job when it was really someone inside . . . someone who knew him well and wanted him dead . . .
Delta jerked awake in her seat. She’d fallen into a daze. Her pulse ran fast and hard. Outside it had begun to rain even though it was late July, the precipitation flung against the windows by a hard, accusing wind. Delta felt under attack, singled out by the elements.
You’re in trouble, girl.
She lifted her head and looked around and asked herself the question that had been at the back of her brain but now came roaring again to the front. Who had stabbed Tanner? Who would do that? Who wanted him dead?
You did.
“No . . .”
He could die.
The thought knocked the breath from her. No. Not Tanner. He was almost larger than life. The kid who’d made good on his dream of becoming a doctor. His dad had taken shortcuts and paid the price, but Tanner had put his nose to the grindstone and worked like a Trojan. His efforts had paid off, because he was an excellent physician, a gastroenterologist who worked with a combination of diet, exercise, health supplements, drugs, and surgery to help obese people, or even anyone who wanted to lose a few pounds, drop the extra weight, and gain a new, healthier lifestyle. He was beloved.
What if he doesn’t make it through the night?
She couldn’t think like that. She couldn’t think at all!
With a kind of dreaded expectation, she watched McCrae walk into the ER. His eye fell on her, and he headed her way. Behind him, Quin—Officer Quintar, she reminded herself—entered through the sliding double doors. Quin took a look at Delta, and she read the accusation he didn’t try to hide. But instead of joining McCrae, he peeled off to the reception desk.
“Delta,” McCrae said, taking a seat next to her. “Quin’s going to ask you some questions about what happened, but you might not want to answer them here.”
“I don’t want to leave Tanner. My mom’s taking care of Owen, but she needs to go home, too. I don’t know what to do.”
“We need to find out what happened.”
“I don’t know what to do,” she repeated.
She gazed at him, taking him in. He’d aged since high school and the reunion, but hadn’t they all? Some more than others. McCrae’s crow’s feet at the edges of his eyes spoke of a sense of humor—or squinting into the sun, she supposed—though she sensed it was the former. She remembered him saying the night of the barbeque that they needed to call the police, then taking off in the golf cart with Amanda. He’d also accused her of being as judgmental as Ellie, or something to that effect, and yet here he was, the lawman. She also remembered him at the reunion. A bit apart from the guys’ group, where Tanner had held court.
He was saying something, something she’d missed: “. . . was a classmate and friend, so Officer Quintar will be the lead on the case.”
