Distant Blood by Jeff Abbott Page A

received in the mail. But I couldn't, not now. His grief was too fresh to bear further wounding. Morning would be here soon enough. And I still reeked of Lolly's puke.
    “Uh, do you want to talk?” I offered. I did not reach out to him often, but I could hardly be reticent now.
    “I need to get some rest,” he muttered, and broke away from my grip. “I'll see you in the morning, okay?”
    “All right. In the morning.” He retreated to the bedroom and shut the door. I stared at the doorknob, listening to the quiet of the old house. My imagination made me hear a footfall along the darkened hallway, and I hurried to the stairs, to the comfort of my own room and a long hot shower.
    From my bedroom window, I listened to the waves lapping across the bay. The helicopter had risen like a gargantuan bug several minutes ago, arrowing toward land. Moonlight silvered the water, making the wind-gusted swells resemble trenches of metal. I thought again of those brave Texans aboard the
Reliant
, their ghosts entombed beneath the waters. I felt isolated.
    I wondered, for a brief moment, if this was how someone surrounded by a moat felt if they didn't have a key to the drawbridge.
    A knock rapped at my door and I murmured, “Come in.”
    Candace came in, bedecked in cutoffs and a T-shirt from the Bonaparte County Fair. She looked absolutely adorable in them and I felt a grin, for the first time in hours, tug at my mouth.
    “Hey.” I kissed her softly. “How you?”
    “Okay. Awful tired. How are you feeling, sweetie?”
    “Don't use that word, please.” I shuddered.
    Candace clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, my God. Sorry.”
    I wanted to go a few minutes without thinking about Aunt Lolly. Horribly selfish of me, but I'm only being honest. I tried lightening the conversation. “Look at you, running around kissing boys at midnight. It might be a family scandal. You might get your own chapter in Aubrey's book now. And whatever would dear Aunt Sass say?”
    She brushed a tendril of her chestnut-dark hair off her face. “I don't care what that old biddy says. What a terribly cold woman she is, Jordy.” She sat down cross-legged on my bed. “Her own aunt dies and she hardly changes expression.”
    I shrugged. “People show grief in different ways. You want to stay with me tonight after all?”
    “Is that how you show grief, mister?” She smiled, then frowned. “Oh, God, I didn't mean that the way it sounded. How are you really feeling, sug?”
    I lay down on the bed and she cradled my head into her lap. I closed my eyes. “I don't know what I should feel. Bob Don seems shocked, Gretchen's acting devastated. I know that Lolly was my great-aunt, but she came into and left my life in a matter of hours. I don't feel sad so much as shocked. She was pretty awful to Deborah.”
    “Yes, she was.” Candace gently stroked my hair. “She didn't strike me as a happy woman.”
    I groaned. “Poor old thing.”
    “So you think she just had a heart attack?” Candace's voice was measured.
    “I don't know. The medical examiner'll tell us, I suppose.” I explained to her about Lolly's body being shipped to Travis County for autopsy. I closed my eyes again, trying not to picture Aunt Lolly struggling, her face turning purple with the effort to draw breath. “If she just had a heart attack, why is a deputy spending the night on the island? They're certainly treating it as a suspicious death.”
    “You aren't the least bit curious? I find it decidedly odd that Uncle Jake's heart medication was gone and Aunt Lolly has a sudden heart attack,” Candace said. Great minds do tend to think alike, cliches aside. I didn't answer and she thunked me on the forehead with her finger.
    I decided to play devil's advocate, just as Mendez had done. “Maybe we shouldn't see murder everywhere we look. She'd just been told her brother only has a short time to live. Besides, why would anyone want to kill that poor old lady? She wasn't right in the