"Oh, Aunt Olivia." Zoe seemed to be trying to pull herself together. She was clearly shaken, her face pale, her running clothes matted with sweat and-and something else. Dark stains. Her running shoes were soaked. "I didn't want you to hear the news from someone else-I…God…" Her eyes, blue with gray flecks like Olivia's baby brother's, filled with tears. "Dad's dead."

Olivia saw now that the dark stains were blood. It had spattered on Zoe's gray shirt and shorts. She tried to speak, but nothing came out.

"He was shot. I found him on my run."

"But he was just here! He stopped in to see me, like he always does. Where? Where did you find him?"

"In the nature preserve. Stewart's Cove." Zoe raked a shaking hand through her short blond curls, her experience as a Maine State Police detective, accustomed to dealing with crime scenes, facts and evidence, not helping her now. But this was different. This was her father. "The marine patrol, state police and local police are there now. I-I have to go back."

"Of course. Christina-"

"She's meeting me there." The tears spilled down her pale cheeks, and when she wiped them with her fingertips, they mixed with her father's blood. "Is Betsy here? I don't want to leave you alone."

Olivia nodded. Betsy O'Keefe was her live-in caregiver, a concession Olivia had made two years ago in order to be able to continue living in her house. Betsy had learned to leave Olivia alone as much as possible in the morning.

The nature preserve was her own doing, Olivia thought. She'd bought up the land with earnings from her books and created a nonprofit organization to maintain it. And now Patrick had been killed there.

Murdered.

Olivia raised one hand, and Zoe took it, squeezed back gently and sobbed. She looked like a young woman who'd just lost her father, not the young woman Olivia had seen only yesterday, so confident and determined, preparing to head to Quantico for her sixteen weeks of training at the FBI Academy. Patrick was proud of her but worried about her zest for adventure, her need to push herself. His father was the same way and died young in the line of duty. He was afraid Zoe would, too. Instead, he had.