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K ate sat in the hallway of the hospital, waiting for somebody to give her an update on her mother’s condition. Colby had just left, and, even now, Rodney paced in front of her.

“I should have gone with you,” he snapped.

“But everybody was okay with Simon coming.”

“Yes, but you shouldn’t have been alone, when finding her like this.”

She looked over at him and realized he was worried about her. “I’m fine, Rodney.”

He frowned at her and snorted. “I doubt that.”

She wanted to laugh. She wanted to cry. She wasn’t even sure what the hell she could do here, so she sat, just wondering and waiting. “Has anybody gone back to her apartment?” she asked her partner.

Rodney nodded. “Lilliana and Colby are there, doing a full sweep of the place.”

“Good.” She dropped her head into her hands, as fatigue swept over her.

“Are you expecting them to find something?”

She lifted her head to frown at him. “Honestly, I’m not sure she did this.”

He froze and asked, “What do you mean?”

“She was expecting me. I don’t think she would have done this if she was expecting me to show up any minute. It doesn’t make sense.”

“But she’s a junkie,… so nothing they do makes sense.”

She had to ponder that because he was right. If it were anyone else and not her own mother in there, Kate probably would have had the exact same answer. But was she a junkie still? She thought back and noted, “The door was unlocked and unlatched.”

“Meaning?” he asked, standing there with his hands on his hips in front of her. “How can you think she didn’t do this?”

“I guess I have to consider it,” she conceded, staring at him, “because of the renewed investigation into Timmy.”

Rodney immediately frowned and turned away to contemplate her words. “That would imply that somebody was afraid of what Selene would say.”

“Exactly.”

“Given the fact that this is a cold case, we don’t know who that could have been.”

“Or what she was planning on telling me,” Kate pointed out. “If somebody thought she would say the wrong thing, they might have done this to prevent it, to make her word worthless potentially making this either an accidental or deliberate overdose,” she explained.

Rodney nodded. “That would make sense.”

When he started to pace again, she studied him, then frowned. “You might as well leave. I’ll stay here anyway.”

He stared at her. “Out of love for your mother, right?” he asked, with a sardonic tone.

She winced and shrugged. “She contacted me, and she’s still involved in a case that I’m involved in,” she murmured. “So I don’t really feel as if I can just leave.”

“No, of course not, sorry. That was a really bitchy comment.”

She smiled. “Given the circumstances we’re in, I’ll let you off the hook on that.”

He shrugged. “You used to come across as such a bitch, and now you come across as… way too nice.” As she frowned at him in astonishment, he nodded. “In some ways, I almost like the other response better.” And, with that, he stormed out of the hospital, leaving her staring after him.

What the hell was that all about? She didn’t know, but it made zero sense. Yet that was his issue, not hers. At least she hoped not. God,… what a mess.

Just then her phone rang. Simon . She quickly answered, without even saying hello, “No update.”

A sigh came on the other end. “Not shocking, I guess. Do you want me to come by?”

“Not unless you’re bringing coffee and food,” she muttered.

He laughed. “I can do that too, you know?”

“You don’t exist just to feed me,” she muttered. “I can always grab something from the hospital cafeteria.” She swore she heard his wince.

“I don’t think so,” he declared in shock. “That would be worse than anything.”

She chuckled. “You do know people live on that stuff here.”

“Yeah, they also die there too,” he snapped back immediately.

She wouldn’t argue because he was right. She was in a hospital after all. “I’ll give you an update whenever I have something.… I just sent Rodney home.”

“I’m surprised he was still there.”

“I think he was looking to support me.”

“And I suppose you told him that it was fine and that you didn’t need any support.”

She sighed. “In a way,… that’s kind of how I feel.”

“Numb?” he asked.

“Maybe,” she conceded. “I don’t know whether it’s numb so much as just trying to figure out what the hell’s going on with this case and why she would have contacted me. I think that’s the part that bothers me the most.”

“You’re thinking somebody did this to her?”

“I have to consider it, don’t I?” She sighed again. “I mean, if she decided to bare her soul, and somebody would be affected by that, some potential conspirator or somebody she may have been hiding all this time, then they aren’t left in a good position.”

“Are you thinking Selene had something to do with your brother’s disappearance?”

“No,” she replied immediately, “I honestly don’t. Yet I’m worried that she knows who did. And, rather than dealing with it all those years ago, she’s finally decided that now is the time.”

“Interesting,” Simon muttered. “That could be tough, breaking through decades of some conspiracy to keep it quiet.”

“And potentially exposing someone who thought they were safe and moved on,” she pointed out.

“Until now.”

“Exactly. Therefore, I plan to stay here, waiting for her to wake up—until the next emergency breaks.”

“Understood. I’ll be by in a few minutes.”

And, with that, he was gone, leaving her staring down at her phone and wondering if she really should have brought him in or not. As much as she wanted to have him around sometimes, he wasn’t necessarily the easiest person to include because he made her look at things in her life that she didn’t particularly want to deal with. Yet there really wasn’t any option when it came to him.

Just then the doctor walked out of her mother’s room, saw Kate was still here, and frowned. When she raised an eyebrow, he nodded. “Selene will make it.” He hesitated, then asked, “Does she have a history of drugs?”

“She has a previous history of drugs,” Kate clarified. “I don’t know about the last ten years or so.”

“Right.” He nodded. “I have a very up and down history for her.”

“Yes, and again I don’t know how much of this history is still valid. She was,… I thought, getting help and had potentially moved on.”

“Do you know what happened to set her off?”

“She was a drug addict when I was growing up,” she explained, “so what set her off initially, I don’t know. What I can tell you is that, when I was seven, my younger brother disappeared, and we never saw him again. He was five years old. That sent my mother into a spiral from which she never recovered.”

“Not many do,” the doc confirmed, as he looked back at the woman in the hospital bed, with a complete change in his attitude now.

“Afterward she was eventually remanded for mental health and substance abuse treatment,” Kate shared, trying to keep the irony out of her voice. “We ultimately lost touch. I was put into foster care and made a life for myself.”

“Without her?”

“Yes, without her,” Kate declared, her tone hardening. “She blamed me for my brother’s disappearance.” When he looked at her in surprise, she shrugged. “I was seven and didn’t take kindly to having the blame put on my shoulders.”

“Put on your shoulders because she had to have a target, and you were available,” the doctor suggested, with a nod. “We see that a lot too.”

“Maybe, but, when it’s on your shoulders, it really sucks.”

“It does, indeed,” he agreed, “but you’re a cop now, aren’t you?”

“I am, and we currently have a reason to reopen my brother’s case,” she said. “The police tried to talk to her about it yesterday, and then she contacted me later to come talk to her. When we got there, we found her like this.”

“Interesting, since it begs the question, was she really ready to talk to you, or did she change her mind at the last minute and panicked?”

“I don’t know,” Kate admitted. “However, I very much want to hear what she had to say.”

“Of course,” he replied. “It’ll be a while though. Don’t get your hopes up that she’ll be terribly willing to talk when she first wakes up.”

“Right, I understand. If she changed her mind and did this,” she noted, “then obviously she may wake up with that same mind change.”

“Exactly,” he murmured. “Anyway, she’ll be out for hours yet, so you can’t talk to her. If you want to go ho—”

“I’ll stay,” she cut him off, her tone inflexible.

He nodded. “That’s what I figured you would say.” And, with that, he turned and headed down the hallway.

Only a few minutes later came Simon, walking toward her. When she raised her eyebrows at him, he shrugged.

“I was already on my way over.”

She groaned. “Of course you were.” However, the smell of food woke up her system in a big way. Her stomach growled as he approached.

He smiled. “It does seem that I need to feed you on a regular basis.”

She shook her head but reached eagerly for the bag. “I didn’t used to eat this much”—she rolled her eyes—“until after you showed up.”

“And that’s not good,” he declared, eyeing her. “In theory, you should be eating steadily.”

“Sure, but it was never a big issue before. Besides, I had to provide my own food.” She sent him a cheeky grin.

That made him laugh. He added, “I’m glad you’re in decent spirits.”

She shook her head. “I’m not really. Even though they’ve told me that she’ll survive, I’m not convinced she will.”

“Meaning?”

She shrugged. “I don’t understand what’s going on, so I really want to know what she has to say and whether that had anything to do with her actions afterward.”

“Or did somebody else do this?” he pointed out shrewdly.

She nodded. “Or did somebody else. At the office, everybody else is trying to do an investigation into this,” she murmured. “That’s got its own set of hazards.”

“Nobody else was at her place?”

“No, but still somebody could have been accustomed to spending a night or two.”

“Ah, that’s also very true. Do you want me to go over there and take another look?”

She immediately shook her head. “No, I want to. They’ve already sent forensics over there, but I want to make sure I’m in on that final sweep.”

“And can you be?” he asked.

“I hope so,” she muttered, as she unwrapped a sandwich. “That’s the plan anyway. My plan. And I know they all have ideas of what I should and should not be doing in this one, but it’s pretty hard to just sit here and to do nothing but wait.”

“And that’s what they want you to do?”

“They want as much as they can to keep me out of the investigation,” she shared, with a wry look at him.

“And, of course, you’ll thwart that, won’t you?”

“No, I won’t, at least not deliberately.” He just rolled his eyes at that, and she shrugged. “I mean, I’m not even the best person to talk to about her, but, if she has somebody who’s staying over there, or coming and going on a regular basis, that is someone we need to talk to—not to mention her coworkers and other potential contacts.”

“And you will do a bunch of that yourself, but not as a cop, right?”

“I was thinking about that,” she admitted, with a nod. “By rights I could go do something constructive tonight.” She frowned as she looked down at her watch, and almost immediately Colby contacted her. She skipped the usual greeting and went with the update. “She’s doing okay, and they say she’ll come around, but she’ll be out for several hours, so I can’t talk to her yet,” Kate began. “I want to go to her place and take a closer look and see if she’s had anybody else living there or visiting regularly, plus talk to the neighbors and see if anybody saw anything.” When Colby hesitated, she sighed. “I know, but we’re also shorthanded, and, in this case, it makes sense that it would be me.”

“Until there’s a problem, and then it doesn’t make sense at all.”

“Of course,” she murmured, “but, if we were to keep to that standard, we would never get anywhere. I’ve got Simon here with me, and we can just take a quick look through her place and ensure forensics didn’t miss anything.”

“That’s what forensics does,” he reminded her. “They don’t miss stuff.”

“They don’t intend to miss things,” she clarified, “but you also know that they often do.”

He hesitated.

“I’ll let you know if I find anything. Obviously I didn’t get a chance to look around at all because of how we found her. So I want to at least go back and take a look at what, in my mind, should have been there.”

“Are you looking for something specific?”

“No, not specific, but it does feel as if we’re missing something.”

“Fine,” he relented, “but you let me know when you get there, and you let me know when you leave.”

“Will do.” She hopped to her feet as she put away her phone. She looked at Simon and added, “You don’t have to come.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I’m your ride, remember? Plus, you already told your boss that I was going with you.”

“I know,” she admitted, with a smile. “He seems to think you’re a calming influence on me or something.”

Simon snorted. “That just says he doesn’t know you all that well, doesn’t it?”

“I’m sure he wants to think he knows me very well,” she noted, “but this is unfamiliar territory for all of us.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that it’s my mother,” she acknowledged. “It’s my mother. It’s my brother, and it’s a whole mess of emotions. I understand his point. I get it. Yet I still just need Colby to give me a little room to maneuver.”

Simon asked, “Do you want to go in and say hi to Selene?”

“No, she’ll be out of it for hours yet. Plus, they’re still working on her. Let’s just go. I’ll come back afterward.” When he frowned at that, she shrugged. “What else am I supposed to do? I need to check out her apartment now, with a fresh perspective.”

“Right,” he replied, staring her down.

She frowned. “I’m not saying that as a daughter. I’m saying that as a detective.”

He rolled his eyes. “Whatever you want to believe,” he muttered, as he nudged her down the hallway.

“Good sandwich too,” she shared, as she took the last bite and dropped the wrapper into the closest bin. “Did you want one?”

“I’ll eat later.” When she frowned at him, he added, “It’s fine. Let’s go.”

“How was your day?” she asked him.

“My day was fine,” he said, “but this is all about you.”

“I don’t want it to be all about me.” She moaned. She knew she was being difficult, but it was hard to manage all the emotions brought up when dealing with her mother and her brother. Everybody seemed to be walking on tenterhooks around her, and she didn’t like that either. Then again, there wasn’t a whole lot to like about any of this.

She walked out of the hospital, then stopped and took several deep breaths. “I really hate those places.”

He smiled and nudged her to his car up ahead. She hopped into the passenger seat, and he drove the relatively short distance to her mother’s apartment.

As they got to Selene’s door, several neighbors came out of nearby apartments. Kate asked them if they knew the woman, keeping it tucked away that it was her mother.

One of them shrugged, and he replied, “I’ve seen her around. Why?”

“She’s in hospital at the moment,” Kate shared. “We just wondered if she had any regular visitors or any friends.”

“None that I know of,” he said, “but I wouldn’t know because I don’t keep track of her.” He looked around at his neighbors. “Honestly, I don’t have a lot to do with anybody in this place.”

“Right,” she noted, as the neighbors all headed toward the elevator, laughing and talking among themselves.

Nobody looked back, and nobody seemed to care as she turned to her mother’s apartment.

Kate sighed, as she watched them leave. She turned to Simon. “You don’t realize how isolated the world is, until you run into somebody who’s got an issue. Then you find out that nobody even knows they existed.”

“What’s that now, pity?” Simon asked.

“No,” she declared, glaring at him. “But it’s not just about my mother, it’s everyone. How many times do we come across people who don’t have family, friends, or anybody who gives a crap?”

He just nodded.

She came to the door, then groaned and pushed it open. Almost immediately the memories assaulted her. She took a deep breath and stepped through. She was glad that Simon didn’t say anything but just watched her. She looked around, frowned, and muttered, “Forensics has obviously been here.”

“Of course they have. Isn’t that what you expected?”

“I did, but I guess I also half expected to see some evidence of some crime.”

“Yet you also might have to ultimately accept that there was no crime and that it was self-induced.”

“I know,” she muttered. “I know that but not yet…”

“However, just because you know your mother was a junkie, doesn’t mean that you’re ready and prepared to see the evidence of a slide back into that same state again. And, in this case, we don’t know that’s what happened.”

“No, we don’t,” she agreed. “I’m just trying to be objective.” She walked into the kitchen, her gaze turning sharp as she carefully studied one thing after another.

She stopped inside, then frowned. “She hasn’t been living alone. That’s for sure.” There in the bathroom were multiple toothbrushes and several other male trappings—shavers, razors, and a grooming kit.

“At least not all the time,” Simon pointed out. “Doesn’t mean anybody’s been here recently though.”

“That’s true too,” she murmured, as she kept going.

Getting to the bedroom, she quickly checked under the bed. Inside the nightstand she found boxes of condoms and not a whole lot else. Frowning, she stepped out.

Simon asked, “What’s the matter?”

She shrugged. “I get that she lived here.” She looked all around. “But there’s also not a whole lot of personality here. Seems she’s either just moved here or doesn’t spend a lot of time here.”

*

Now that Kate had mentioned it, Simon saw the same thing. “It’s possible she just moved in,” he pointed out. “Particularly if she has not been out of a treatment center for very long.”

Kate nodded and stared around the room. “It’s something we’ll take a look at.”

“Of course.”

She went from one room to the other and then headed right back to the bedroom. For whatever reason, that was where she centered her focus.

For him it was fascinating to watch her slide right back into detective mode. It was a little easier to understand her when she was like this. It was easier to see where she was coming from and who she was looking after in her mind. When she turned and headed to the bedroom, he was on her heels.

He stood in the doorway and watched, not sure what she was looking for, but knowing that, until she found it, she would dig away. She opened the closet and started pulling out box after box, three in total, all seemingly packed up and ready to move. She whistled as she opened the top one.

“What is all this?” he asked, as he stepped forward.

She frowned, looking down at the boxes. “Case files,” she said softly. “Files on my brother.”

He frowned back at her, and she nodded, pointing at them. “Interesting,” he muttered, as Kate began sifting through one box.

“Articles, newspapers, all about it,” she noted. “Nothing seems to have been disturbed in a while. Maybe she held on to everything, hoping, but then gave up after a time.”

“In a way that helps to clear her, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe.… I mean, mentally, if you were this fixated on the case itself, maybe it shows that you aren’t related to any of the happenings about it. Yet a lot of people can twist that around to say she was following everything in the news afterward in order to stay abreast of any developments. Then she could get herself out of trouble quickly.”

Simon looked startled. “I hadn’t considered that.”

“Lots of people who commit murder have that same reaction,” she shared. “They hound the files. They hound the newspapers. They hound everything so they can stay one step ahead. Honestly, that is what a lot of people would say this is about.” She shook her head.

“What does it mean to you?”

She stared at him, and her tone was bleak. “Honestly? A life lost.”

“Yours, your brother’s, whose?” he asked, not sure why he was pushing her.

“Hers. More than anything,… hers.” And, with that, Kate opened up the other boxes, realizing that the contents of all three were related to her brother’s case. “How come she has so much?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t have this much in the official file,” she muttered. With that, she took the top box to the bed and started pulling out folders and files. It wasn’t long before she turned and looked at him. “She hired a private detective.”

“She did?” he asked. “I didn’t think she had any money.”

“I didn’t think so either,” Kate confirmed, frowning as she looked back down at the files.

“Do you think she hired the PI?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted, “but that’s what these files are.”

“And you’re saying that doesn’t jive with the woman you know?”

“Nothing jives with the woman I know,” she stated, with a mock smile, “but remember that my information is very old. And I haven’t had an update on her in a long time.”

He acknowledged that any update would have meant Kate had some contact with her mother, and that was something both of them had avoided all these years. He asked, “Does the PI have a name?”

She went through the folders and nodded. “Yeah.” She brought out a report from him, took a photo of it, and read off the name on the report. “John McCauley. Do you know him?”

Simon shook his head. “No, but I don’t know very many private investigators anyway.” He gave her a wry smile. “No need to use them.”

“ Right ,” she murmured. She pulled out her phone and dialed the number for the guy. She immediately frowned once more.

“What’s the matter?”

“It says the number is no longer in service.” She stared down at the files. It didn’t take much for the two of them to find an address. She looked over at him. “Are you up for a road trip?”

“Always,” he replied. “Do you want to take photos of any of this stuff?”