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Amber brushed back a strand ofblonde hair that threatened to get in her blue eyes, adjusted the glasses shewore, and tried not to show any of what she was feeling to the others there. Shewas wearing a dark suit, her badge and weapon at her belt, but she didn’t feelmuch like an agent right then. All of this had shaken her too much. It hadstripped away the professionalism that she normally tried to wear like armor.
Morning light spilled in throughthe apartment’s windows. The apartment was far too similar to Amber’s own placein a lot of ways. There were puzzles set on most of the surfaces, with books ontrivia standing on shelves and a large chess set in one corner.
Agent Mallory was moving throughthe apartment, directing the efforts of the investigators. He was a man in hisfifties, with salt and pepper hair and a dark suit almost as severe as hisexpression as he headed over in Amber’s direction.
“You gave me the wrong information,Young,” he said. “You sent me in the wrong direction, and now a woman is dead.”
A second figure moved to intercepthim. Agent Simon Phelps was taller than Amber's petite frame, with dark hairand square-jawed good looks. His broad-shouldered, muscular frame always madeit seem as if his suit were on the verge of bursting if he moved too quickly, andcurrently, his dark eyes were looking at Amber with obvious concern.
“That’s enough, Mallory. This isn’tAmber’s fault, and you know it.”
“All I know,” Mallory snapped back,“is that, thanks to the information your partner gave me, I was sitting in thewrong place while another victim was killed.”
“Sinead,” Amber said, cuttingthrough the building argument. “Her name was Sinead Ballor.”
Sinead had been a fellow puzzler,someone Amber had known in her previous life as a puzzle editor and competitivepuzzler. They hadn’t been close friends, but Amber had known her, had met herat plenty of conventions and competitions. They’d even hung out after a few ofthem.
Amber winced at the thought thatknowing her had been what had gotten the other woman killed. Just like Amber’sold friend Casey and her aunt, Harriett. Knowing Amber, being mentioned in thediary/workbook that this killer had snatched from Amber’s apartment, had beenenough to put them all on the radar of a ruthless killer. Amber felt a wave ofguilt at that. If it weren’t for her, then all three of the dead women wouldstill be alive.
“This isn’t your fault, Amber,”Simon said, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. It felt like a strangelyintimate gesture for the middle of a crime scene, but maybe Amber was justimagining that. Maybe she was just assuming that everyone there could see howclose the two of them had started to become, that they could somehowintuitively know that she and Simon had kissed only yesterday. Amber stilldidn't know what that meant or where it would go, and the middle of a crimescene wasn't the place to try to work it out.
“Like hell it isn’t,” Mallory said.“She’s meant to be some famous puzzler, but she sent us in the wrongdirection.”
“Because you didn’t give Amber allthe information she needed!” Simon snapped back, leaping to Amber’s defense.
That was true, as far as it went. Thekiller had left a note with Aunt Harriett’s body, and just the thought of thatmade Amber’s stomach churn. The note had seemed to provide clues to Amber’sdiary, and words in it. What Mallory hadn’t told her was that there hadbeen designs on the walls of Harriett’s house, and putting them together withthe designs on the card radically changed the meaning of the puzzle.
Sinead had been the target, andAmber hadn’t been in time to save her.
Mallory and Simon were stillarguing somewhere in the background, but Amber wasn't listening to them. Instead,she went over to the spot where a puzzle box lay abandoned on the floor, beingdusted carefully for prints by a crime scene investigator in a plastic suit. Hewas a black man in his thirties, with a short goatee and a serious expression.
“Is this what killed Sinead?” Amberasked.
The crime scene investigator nodded.“It looks likely. The box has hidden needles. The coroner will need to runtoxicology, but it seems likely that Ms. Ballor was poisoned. Maybe as soon asshe touched it.”
Amber looked at the puzzle box,then shook her head. “No, that’s not right. Look, the box is partiallycomplete.”
“Amber, have you found something?”Simon asked.
“I’m just saying that the puzzlebox that killed Sinead is partially complete,” Amber said.
“Meaning what?” Mallory asked,moving over to join the two of them.
“Meaning that she started to solveit,” Amber said. She thought back to the two murders that had gone before.“With Casey, he got her to try to solve a puzzle that gassed her when she wentwrong with it. With Aunt Harriett, he forced her to try to solve a puzzle, thenkilled her when she failed.”
Amber’s heart clenched then at thememory of having to listen in while a man had killed her aunt.
“He tricked Sinead into trying thepuzzle, or he forced her into trying to solve it,” Amber said.
“That doesn’t get us anywhere,”Mallory retorted. “Who cares if he made her solve this or not?”
“Because it tells us somethingabout the man who did this,” Amber replied. “This is all about the game forhim, all of it. And it tells us something about his skills. Sinead was apuzzler, a good one. Yet he managed to craft a puzzle that would trick her intobringing about her own death.”
“So he’s clever,” Mallory said, “asif we didn’t know that already.”
“There’s more,” Amber said. “Thisis… I think this is another one of the designs from my diary. An adaptation ofone, at least.”
“Are you sure?” Mallory asked, “Orwould you like to steal your diary again to make sure?”
