It is in your darkest hours that you find light.

“I’m going to join the eager masses.” Marlis grinned wider than wide and kissed Larkin’s cheek. “Knock ’em dead.” Her friend winked before slipping out the door.

Larkin stood in the waiting room at the bottom of The Ashford. Chatter from the small crowd gathered in the opulent lobby seeped inside for a split second. Shutters clicked. Camera flashes glared. Test shots. She checked her watch. Nine fifty-five. Five more minutes.

She hadn’t given people much warning, so Libby and Genevieve couldn’t attend. A criminal to catch and court. Libby cheered her on with over-the-top GIFs, and Gen sent a case of the cheapest beer ever made. Her friends were the best. With their help and the backbone she’d fortified over a lifetime, she would make it through.

The door swung wide and hard, coming directly for her face. Larkin jumped back, teetering on her heels. She used the arm of a chair to catch herself.

“What the hell is going on?” Lucas stormed through the door.

“Besides you almost clocking me with the door?” She assessed both heels for a crack. The last thing she wanted to do was make headlines for falling on her entrance. Then the headlines would read, “Duo and Ditto CEO is a Fall-down Drunk.”

“Why is every member of the media in the lobby?”

Lucas’s hair was ruffled. His chin boasted never-before-seen stubble. The tail of his blue tie hung out of his jacket.

“If you’d bothered to show up to work on time, you would have been informed.” Larkin straightened her skirt, blouse, and jacket. “I’m fine, by the way.” She smoothed the top of her low ponytail.

“What’s going on out there, Larkin? Why are all those people out there? Reporters and their greasy-fingered photographers are crowding the lobby.” He slammed the door and stood between her and the only exit.

The tiny hairs on the back of Larkin’s neck rose.

“I’m the head of security for The Ashford. How can I secure the location if I’m not informed of events taking place?” He slung a hand toward the closed door. “I need to vet those people. Any one of them could mean you harm.” His voice rattled the walls.

“Larkin, they’re ready for you.” Douglas’s calm voice filled the room.

“What’s going on?” Lucas bellowed.

Bolstered by Douglas’s presence, Larkin stepped forward. “Yell at me one more time, and it’ll be your resignation.” She maneuvered around him and walked toward Douglas. “As for the crowd, you’ll see soon enough.”

Douglas’s hand slipped from inside his jacket. His gaze fixed on Lucas until he shut the door, closing Lucas inside. “He’s got to go.” Douglas placed his hand on the small of her back and led her down a short maze of corridors toward the lobby. The rumble of the crowd grew with their every step. “I know a guy, overqualified and in need of a new mission. He can fill Lucas’s role tomorrow.”

“Were you going to shoot him?”

“Let me fire him before it comes to that. I don’t trust the guy.”

Larkin hated letting anyone go. In the current economic climate, job stability was everything. “I don’t trust him either.”

“Good.” His steps slowed before they rounded the last corner. She matched his pace. “I’ll do it while you give your speech. He’ll be out of here before the applause dies.”

“Oh, no.” A sudden inexplicable sadness deflated the buoyancy keeping her afloat. “You’ll miss my big to-do?”

“Larkin, I already know what you’re going to say.” He placed his hand on her shoulder and squeezed.

“How? I haven’t told anyone.”

“I’ve known you since you were a crying, chubby-cheeked baby.” His eyes glistened for a fraction of a second. Maybe it was the light. His hand fell away. “Your teenage years were trial and error, but I know the way you think.”

Douglas had been in her family’s employ before hers, but only after her mother passed away. Her mind tried to calculate the angles. So many sides were misshapen or blurred. “You knew my mother?”

His shoulders didn’t budge. The stern line of his chin locked in place. If she hadn’t known him for most of her life, she never would have caught the sudden gleam in his eye. It was subtle. Like the shift from twelve p.m. to noon. It was so miniscule she might have imagined it.

“Your mother and I grew up together.”

“Really?” How had she not known this? Her mother never mentioned him. He never mentioned her, other than in passing conversation.

“Yep.” They’d stopped walking altogether.

Come to think of it, her mother never mentioned anything about her childhood. Her parents had been killed when she was a little girl. That was all she’d ever said about her past.

“Where? When? How did you know each other?” She grabbed his arm as though it were a life raft. “Why are you just telling me this now?”

He hugged her close. Really hugged her. “Because I almost lost you, and I realized I’ve never really had you.”

“What does that mean?” Did it mean what she stupidly hoped it meant?

Douglas leaned her back. His arms still held tightly to hers. “After your big to-do, let me take you to lunch.” The request was so quiet she might have missed it with the impatient crowd that grew louder by the second had she not been staring at his face.

“Yes.” Her smile stretched her cheeks so wide they hurt from lack of use of her smile muscles. “Of course.”

“I’ll kick Lucas to the curb and have the car waiting out front. Whenever you’re ready.”

“Okay.”

Douglas kissed her cheek and turned her toward the lobby. “I’m proud of you, Larkin.” When she stood there stunned, he gave her the nudge she needed to move forward. Her mind was in a thousand places at once. But the moment the elbow-to-elbow full lobby came into view, her mission boomeranged back into focus.

Larkin was tired of the world dictating her truth. This was her time to set the record straight.

Shoulders back and chin high, she stepped onto the low stage and took hold of the podium. She didn’t say a word. Instead, she eyed each of the screaming reporters in turn and waited for the room to hear what she had to say. That was why they’d come. One by one, they quieted until the room breathed in time with her inhales and exhales.

Everyone breathed with her except the members of her board. With the exception of Genevieve, the rest had jumped at the opportunity for camera time. Tarin sat front and center with an ugly cream-colored purse in her lap atop terrible brown slacks. Worst thing she wore was a clown-like smile and eager eyes. The eyes wormed their way under Larkin’s skin. They were too wide. Too crazy. Too ready for an explosion. Cornish sat next to her on his phone oblivious to everything. Brice and Bitsy sat together at the end of the second row, looking poised to make a break for it if things went sideways. Smart. Benjamin Daily sat on the opposite end of the row from the two old lovebirds, an island unto himself.

“Thank you all for coming on such short notice. I know your time is valuable, so I’ll keep this brief.”

Again, the room erupted in questions. Again, she quieted.

It took a bit longer, but they came to heel.

“As of late, the media has been abuzz with false information. False information leaked by a member of my board of directors.” Each member reacted to the jab. Tarin’s crazy eyes focused. Brice’s shoulders straightened even more, though it didn’t seem possible. Cornish dropped his phone. Benjamin slouched in his chair. Marlis, who leaned against the wall, smiled.

“By some members of my board, I was very strongly urged to marry. They didn’t want me to marry out of love or tradition, but they begged me to marry so that I might more successfully launch my company onto the public market.”

The room lit with flashes and questions. She bided her time until they were ready.

“We live in a time and country where women marry because they want to, not because they have to. Where women are waiting later and later to marry. Where some choose to never marry. Where they create families through single adoption or artificial insemination. I live in a time and a country where I don’t have to mold my life choices to fit any preconceived path and neither do you.”

One female reporter, in particular, whooped in the back of the room. Her hands lifted into the air and another joined her. A small murmur started and grew to a conservative cheer.

Larkin spoke over the cheers. “Duo and Ditto offer a platform to help make marriage and bringing a baby into the world easier, but, by no means, are either of those things necessary for happiness. Find your passions and pursue them wholeheartedly. Above all, don’t let anyone dictate your truth except you.”

The room burst into cheers and whoops. The women grew bolder with each passing second. Her message would find its audience. She hoped the next one would too.

She looked at the side of the room where Darren and Marlis stood apart from the crowd. Darren offered her a large smile and shook the large stack of manila envelopes filling his arms. Mar held a load as well.

Larkin held up her hand and waited for quiet. “Now, to the real reason we are all here today.”

Tarin Blakely crouched low and crept her way down the aisle. The front half of the room stared at the woman and the awkward way she crawled over laps and out to the aisle. Once there, she booked it toward the exit with her head down and hideous purse shrouding her face. Several reporters whispered among themselves.

Screw Tarin and her weird ass ways. They had more important things to handle.

“My assistant and friend, Reagan Walstead, was found murdered early Sunday morning. She first went missing Tuesday, the tenth, between the hours of five and seven p.m.”

The quiet hardened into something else. Layers of surprise contorted the reporters’ faces. She was telling them something they didn’t know. They were accustomed to knowing everything and assuming more.

Larkin turned her head to motion Darren and Marlis ahead. The sexy detective, Owen Graham, stood next to them, giving her a surprise of her own. She swallowed it back and gave the nod.

“My colleagues are passing around a packet with digital and print images of Reagan Walstead as well as her last known whereabouts, the clothes she was wearing, and other important information.” Whispers started up as Darren and Marlis moved through the crowd, dispensing the information. “If you care enough to run an article about my love life, I ask you to care enough to put my murdered friend’s face on the front pages of your outlets. Please help us garner credible leads and catch her killer.”

The crowd lobbed hundreds of questions in her direction at once. “Please, I’d love the opportunity to answer your questions, but I have to hear them, and you need to hear my response. Know there are some things I’m not at liberty to discuss. There are other things I will not discuss in regards to my personal life. So with a show of hands, who has a question?”

She stared into a sea of arms and flapping hands.

As her teacher had when she was young, Larkin picked the quietest reporters first. Soon, the masses caught on and followed their colleagues’ examples. The more questions she answered, the more members of her esteemed board bowed out. An hour was eaten up in a blink. A blink and a sore throat.

“Again, thank you all for attending. Any help you can give in bringing my friend’s killer to justice is greatly appreciated.”

Larkin walked off the stage toward the corridor. Marlis and Darren rushed to her side. She motioned the detective along. The small group walked through the cordoned-off path past Carl and Dan, who stood sentinel. They rounded the corner out of camera shot, and Larkin exhaled so deeply her bra strap slipped off the edge of her shoulder under her shirt.

“I’m so proud of you.” Marlis tackled her in a hug.

“That was pretty ballsy, if I do say so myself.” Darren preened, accentuating a waist most women would die for.

Larkin smiled until her gaze reached the detective’s. His jaw worked in a circle as though he’d been chewing on words for forty minutes and they’d turned to gum in his mouth. “I didn’t deviate from the speech you okayed. I stuck to the issue without giving anything away.”

Why was she defending herself? She’d done nothing wrong.

“We need to talk now.” His gaze scanned the area as though looking for a place to speak in private.

Mar kissed her cheek. “I’m gone. Dinner with the girls, my place?”

“Sounds great.” Larkin waved her off.

Darren stepped out of the small circle. “I’m sure I have a thousand messages to tend to. Amazing speech, really.” He waved and headed for the elevator.

“This way.” Larkin led the way to the waiting room. She needed to grab her purse and phone out of there anyway.

The stony man didn’t say a word. They speed-walked their way to the windowless room … the windowless room she was about to close herself inside with a man she hardly knew. Huh, familiar situations. Beckett. None of the familiar feelings boiled to the surface. Not fear. Not intrigue. Nothing. The high of the press conference died a swift death, leaving her devoid. Leaving her a void.

Hearing Douglas’s voice in her mind, Larkin crossed to her purse and looped the long leather strap over her head and around one arm. Behind her, the click of the door latch catching in its frame pinged off her spine. Maybe not nothing. She turned quickly. The detective stood near the door. Both his arms crossed over a wide chest. He was too wide and his clothes too wrinkled at the edges to be automatically pegged for a lawman. Actually, take away the badge and he looked more like a vagabond.

“Miss Ashford—”

“Detective Graham, was anything wrong with my speech?” He hadn’t wanted her to speak about Reagan at all. She’d had no qualms about arguing with him over the phone. In person, however, she wanted to stay on his good side.

“No. Would Tarin Blakely have ever had cause to be in your garage at your house in The Hamptons?”

The question caught her sideways, taking her for quite the ride. Tarin? Why was he asking about her? Had he answered her question? Minimally. Concisely. The detective was a wanderer who had nothing tying him to a home. A detective with nothing to lose but the case. His single-mindedness offered an unexpected level of comfort.

“No.” Her head shook. It helped with the disorientation.

“But she was at your house?” His gaze narrowed.

“Yes, once, for a party I threw for the pool of board members I was considering.”

“June third?”

“Yes.” Larkin blinked. How had he known the date?

“I spoke with Fitzgerald. East Hampton PD sent over the transcript from your conversation.”

“I didn’t know I was being recorded.”

“Do you have anything to hide?”

“Everyone does, I suppose, but no, not where finding Reagan’s killer is concerned.” Was that the whole truth? What if Beckett was involved? He wasn’t. Even though he tore a hole in her heart, he wasn’t capable of hurting an innocent woman. She didn’t question whether he was capable of killing someone. It read in the way he moved. He could, if he hadn’t already.

“What areas did she have access to at the party?”

“The living room, first bathroom off the main hallway. Foyer. Back deck and bar. The patio bathroom.” Larkin shrugged. “I suppose she could have wandered into any of the rooms except my bedroom, which was locked. The caterers were set up in the kitchen and had their supplies and van in the garage. She couldn’t have gone in there without being seen, but what reason would she have had for going in there in the first place?”

“No good reason.”

“Why are you asking me about Tarin?” Then her brain snapped the pieces together. Reagan’s body was found in the garage. “Why?”

“Evidence found in the garage links Tarin Blakely to Reagan’s murder.”

“No.” Larkin’s head shook hard. So hard it rattled her brain against her skull. “No way. What reason would she have? They had next to no interaction. And her family. Tarin wouldn’t do that to her family. She wouldn’t put her children through this.”

“Family?” The detective’s crossed arms dropped to his sides. He stepped forward. “They were all killed in a car accident when she was a teenager.”

That was awful, but not what she was talking about. “No, her children and her husband.”

“Tarin Blakely isn’t married and has no children.”

Larkin stared at him as though he’d slapped on a leotard and started dancing Swan Lake.

The corners of his mouth twitched. “She’s spun you quite the story, hasn’t she?”

“I don’t understand.” Larkin was shocked her lips moved.

“Where do you think she lives?” A light sparked in Detective Graham’s eyes.

“A colonial two story in Connecticut. She also has a townhouse on the Lower East Side where she stays if she needs to be in town for work.” Larkin grabbed her phone and scrolled to Tarin’s contact information. “Here. I have the addresses right here.” She held up the phone.

Graham stepped closer, grabbed his own phone, and took a picture of her screen. “She’s been living in a shit apartment near Chinatown for two years. It’s littered with takeout boxes and rats. All except for one room.” The detective swiped his screen several times and then held the phone up for Larkin.

Her entire body shook.

“Shit.” He drew the phone away and grabbed her shoulders. “Sit down.” He maneuvered her to a chair.

She couldn’t look anywhere but the picture that was seared into her mind.

“They gave us sensitivity training. It didn’t take. Sorry.” He swiped on his phone once more. “I need to know if you’ve seen this writing anywhere before?”

Larkin shrank away from the screen. She managed to keep her eyes open. Gone were the millions of black marks on the wall that looked like bugs infesting the tidy room. Gone was the rack of ugly brown suits, shoes, and purses set in the center of the room like a monument. Gone was the collage of pictures taped to every surface of the en-suite bathroom mirror and vanity top lit by naked bulbs that accentuated the eyes cut out of each image … of her.

Just one of the tiny black bugs centered the detective’s phone. Only, it wasn’t a bug at all. The word she’d seen scratched on each threatening card stared back at her. CUNT.

Her head nodded.

“Where?”

“Oh God!” Larkin covered her mouth. Bile rose higher and higher. She’d gotten Reagan killed. “This is all my fault.” Her voice quaked.

“How?” Graham crouched in front of her.

“The cards. The flowers. I’d been receiving the threats for weeks and never brought them to the police.”

“Where are they?”

“The cards are in my apartment upstairs. A few are at the office.”

“I need them.”

“We can go get them now.” She wanted them out of her house anyway.

“Who all’s touched them?”

“Me. My driver touched one, the first one. I had him try to track their origin.”

“Your driver?” Graham’s gaze narrowed.

“He wasn’t always a driver,” she hedged. Why hadn’t she agreed to call in the police when he’d first suggested?

“Anyone else?”

“Darren, my new assistant, touched the ones at my office, and the girls.”

“Look, it’s not your fault. This woman has been in a psychiatric ward three times. She should have been locked up years ago. They thought she caused the accident that killed her parents and brother but couldn’t prove it. She’s a schizophrenic off her meds.”

Off her meds. Had that been what she’d seen in the bathroom at Bronson’s party? Her skin crawled. If she’d remembered what was on that fucking pill and looked it up instead of blowing it off, Reagan would still be alive. “If I had reported the threats—”

“She might have escalated sooner and maybe bigger.”

“Reagan is dead,” she whispered. It couldn’t escalate much more.

“With the incendiary devices in her apartment, she could have taken out several floors of your building. And let’s remember, she’d fixated upon you. Reagan just got in her way.”

“Who’s to say she won’t escalate now?” Larkin’s voice pitched. “She’s free.”

“Only because we haven’t located her. I have a car at her house. Have had since midnight.”

“She was here for the speech.”

“Here?” Graham stood.

The door opened, and Lucas stood in the gap. Layers caked upon layers of confusion.

Graham looked at Lucas, then back at her. “Where was she?”

“She was in the front row for the speech, and she left when I started talking about Reagan. I didn’t realize it at the time. I just figured she was pissed about the first part.” Larkin jumped up and wobbled. She caught herself on the chair back. Her stomach cramped.

“I’ve got you.” Lucas grabbed her elbow and steadied her.

Somehow, the two men changed places seamlessly. Lucas was inside, and Graham stood at the exit, his quads firing in place. “I need to check your security footage.”

“Talk to Carl, he’s behind the desk. I’ll let him know you’re coming.”

Graham pointed at Larkin. “She shouldn’t be alone.”

“I’ve got her.” Lucas draped an arm around her and pulled her close.