Until the Central Park incident.

That was when Kara learned that Big Apple bit back and she'd run for home.

Ten years later now, and she was on her way back to identify her sister's body. Alone. Mom was rushing back from Florida and so there was no one else to make this trip but Kara.

Kelly dead! She still couldn't believe it! And the way she had died! Naked, smashed on the sidewalk in front of the Plaza! How could someone have done that to her?

Kara's mind balked at the very question.

Since the call from New York yesterday afternoon, Kara's life had been a bad dream. Kelly, she'd learned, had been dead for more than half a day before the police had got around to calling her.

And it had been Rob of all people who'd made the call.

They hadn't spoken in ten years, yet she had recognized his voice immediately. And she had known that it was something bad, something about Kelly. Why else would Rob call from New York after all this time?

Rob Harris. She had left him high and dry. When she first met him he'd been attending the police academy. She still remembered how cute he'd looked in his hated recruit grays. When she left him he was in regular blues, and she'd been convinced the city was going to kill him.

She wondered if he'd forgiven her yet.

And now she had to see him again. At the morgue. Over poor Kelly's shattered body.

God, how was she going to do this?

▼

Kara shivered in the cold as she stood in the morning crowd outside Penn Station. The city hadn't changed much. The Penn Station-Madison Square Garden area looked older and dirtier. She noticed that the old Statler Hilton was now called the Vista. She felt the pedestrians crowd against her as they stacked up on the sidewalk, waiting for the Seventh Avenue traffic light to change. She clutched her pocketbook tightly against her. These people frightened her.