At the fountain, the small cluster of people divided again, and a female EMT rolled a stretcher toward the other ambulance. Although I couldn’t see her, I knew that Olivia lay on the stretcher. Two EMTs lifted Olivia into the ambulance. Sirens blared, and the ambulance raced off campus. The emergency workers cleared the scene, uselessly wiping their sweaty faces in the humid air. The half dozen police officers circled the fountain, like August yellow jackets around an especially fragrant garbage can.

Mid-morning and the humidity had already plastered my hair to my neck and face. I heard snippets of Mains’s and Mark’s conversation. Mark was harder to hear. I found myself in one of those rare moments when I longed for my cell phone, if only to call my mother and tell her that Mark was okay. She would be climbing the church’s narthex by now. My cell was uselessly sitting in my office back at the library.

Turning my thoughts from my mother, and from Olivia and the stretcher, I mentally replayed the scene at Blockens’ yesterday afternoon and Mark’s strange appearance. Why had he asked to see her? Did he honestly think that she’d leave Kirk for him? Did she actually come? I wondered. There was no other reason for her to be on Martin’s campus than to see Mark. Why would she come? To appease Mark? To finally settle things between them?

I held my knit blouse away from my body, hoping a nonexistent breeze would cool me.

“Miss Hayes,” Mains said, breaking into my thoughts.

“Call me India,” I said, startled.

“Okay, India.” He smiled. “Your brother’s free to go.”

Mark removed the blanket from his shoulders. I gasped. He was soaked to the skin, and his clothes were covered with watery traces of blood. Olivia’s blood. I swallowed hard.

Mark was completely composed. He folded the blanket and handed it to an EMT as if he were computing simple trigonometry. From personal experience, I knew this was a bad sign.