She loads the covered stretcher into the back of the ambulance, its siren and lights dormant. “We’ll take her in and alert the next of kin.”
“That’s it?” Ellery asks. “Shouldn’t we wait for the police?”
The EMT shakes her head. “They don’t come out for overdoses anymore, especially if there are no suspicious circumstances. We ran the address through our database, and it looks like we came out here for the deceased on several different occasions, all for previous overdoses. Only those times we caught it early enough.” She doesn’t bother trying to keep the disdain from her tone.
She shuts the door, and the ambulance pulls away, quickly merging into traffic.
“So, that’s it, then,” Ellery says, her voice breaking.
Declan rests a hand on her shoulder, and I drape an arm around the other side.
“We should go back up there,” I say, feeling as though I’m listening to someone else speaking. “Make sure the door is closed and see if there’s a way to lock it so no one breaks in.”
The others agree, and Kyan insists on having all of us go together. I’m grateful; the last thing I want is to be alone right now.
Moments later, we’re back in Hari’s apartment.
“It doesn’t make sense to me.” This comes from Adrien, who’s standing in the living room, staring down the hallway towards Hari’s bedroom. Despite the stricken look on her face, her tone is analytical. “Why would she have injected herself when she was planning to meet us?”
“For addicts, it doesn’t matter what they have planned or what they intend to do,” Ellery says from where she’s rifling through a kitchen drawer in search of an extra apartment key we can use to lock the door behind us. “They’ll get a hit in any circumstances they can.”
Declan looks at Ellery inquisitively.
“I used to volunteer at the Veteran Affairs Canada,” she explains. “I worked with quite a few addicts.”
Kyan shrugs, having taken a seat on the couch. “But I saw her a week ago and she was completely fine. We met for coffee, and she was saying how she had just hit two years clean. And she was really excited to see everyone again. I even texted with her yesterday morning. She was confirming what time she should come over.”
I think about this from where I stand in the entryway to the kitchen. Itisweird, but then again, Ellery has a point. Maybesomething happened that made Hari lose her resolve before she left for Kyan’s.
“Wow. Guys, look at this.” Ellery is holding a printed photo in her hands, which she evidently just pulled out of Hari’s junk drawer. “This is a blast from the past.”
Ellery hands the photo to Declan, whose eyes widen before passing it to me. I feel a rush when his hand brushes against mine, and I internally scold myself. This is certainly not the place or time for that.
I look at the photo in my hand. Hari stares up at me, her face older than it was the last time I saw her, her hair more neutral, no pink stripes in sight. A man nearly double her size stands next to her, his massive arm looped around her small shoulder. He’s not smiling and is instead looking at the camera as if it offended him. I would recognize that look anywhere.
“Nick Gould,” I breathe out.
“I had no idea they were still in touch,” Kyan says when the photo reaches him. “God, he was quite a character wasn’t he? Remember when he totally went off at that worker in the rest area we stopped at on the way to the Outback?”
Kyan continues, the others joining in on the memory, eager to think of anything besides the body of our friend we found one room over. But my mind drifts. Reliving how I entered Hari’s bedroom, the moment my skin made contact with hers. The stiff coldness of her flesh.
And then I see them.
I noticed them before, but I didn’t have any reason to find themimportant. But now…they don’t fit. I take a step closer to the counter, my mind processing.
“Why does she have two water glasses set out?” I think aloud.
I feel the others’ heads turn in my direction before taking in the two glasses set out on the counter. One has a lipstick stain on the rim—the same shade Hari was wearing, a pink that looked garish against her pale skin. But the other is clean.
“You think she had someone over?” Declan asks.
I don’t answer, but my mind is already jumping to conclusions.
“The door was unlocked,” Ellery says, her voice almost a whisper. “This isn’t the type of place where you keep your door open.”
“Wait,” Kyan says, as if he’s catching up. “You don’t think that she…that someone… killed her?”
I want to laugh it away, to blame my paranoia on Inspector Villanueva’s not-so-veiled threats earlier. I mean, it’s Hari. Who would want to kill her?
