Page 41 of Shadow Justice

She’d never liked him. Most mornings, she’d dreaded the bell over the door followed by his voice, his order, his certainty that everyone in the room existed to absorb his mood.

Now he was dead.

Not just dead. Murdered, with a Sanctuary cup forced into his mouth.

Holly’s stomach rolled hard enough that she had to press one hand to it. “I can’t…”

Reid stood with his hand on her arm. He didn’t try to soften what she was feeling with words that would’ve sounded ridiculous. He didn’t tell her to breathe, which was good because she would have lost control of her emotions and said something she couldn’t take back.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She shook her head, not because she rejected the apology, but because there was nowhere for it to land. “He was just here this morning.”

Her voice sounded distant to her own ears. “I didn’t want him here most days, and this morning, when you made him act like a human being for thirty seconds, I was relieved. That’s awful.”

“No, it isn’t.”

She looked down at Blue because looking at Reid made everything worse. Blue leaned harder against her, and she threaded her fingers into the fur at the top of his head. “I used to see his car pull up and think, please not today. Please let him go somewhere else. Please let someone else deal with him. And now someone killed him, and they shoved my cup in his mouth, and I can’t stop thinking that I was glad when he left.”

“Being relieved someone left your shop isn’t the same as wanting him dead.”

“I understand that.” Her voice was too thin. Her breathing too shallow. “It doesn’t help.”

“I know it doesn’t.”

The steadiness in his voice tugged at her, and she resented needing it. She resented that he could stand there and sound like the one solid thing in a night that had gone horrible around the edges. She wanted to be angry at him for that but couldn’t.

She rubbed her thumb over Blue’s ear. “Did Agent Dawson say where they found him?”

“At one of his development sites outside town.”

“Does his wife know?”

“She will shortly.”

Holly squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t know Mrs. Sullivan well. A name, a face from charity events, a woman who sometimes ordered tea and looked as if she’d trained herself not to take up much space.

“Did he suffer?”

Reid went quiet. “I don’t have that information.”

She opened her eyes. “Was it because of this morning?”

“We don’t know.”

“But you’re considering it.”

“I’m considering everything.”

Which meant yes, at least in part. Hoyt had come into Sanctuary. Customers had come and gone. Holly had steamed milk, wiped counters, smiled at people, and moved through the day with no idea that one of those moments might become evidence.

“So what?” she asked. “Someone is killing people now for being rude to me?”

“We don’t know that Hoyt’s behavior is why he was targeted.”

“But the cup.” She hated the way her voice caught on the word. “The cup makes it about Sanctuary, and Sanctuary is mine.”

Reid’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t argue. That frightened her more than a denial would have. A denial would’ve let her push back. His quiet acceptance told her he’d already reached the same awful place she had and was trying to map a way out without showing her how dark it looked.