Page 32 of You'll Be the Death of Me

The reporters instantly perked up and watched her approach.

“Do you know her?” Cole asked.

Dell watched the woman continue to all but run at them. She wore a mishmash of clothing: sneakers, sweatpants, a camisole, and a designer trench coat open at the front and flapping in the breeze created by her rush. Her hair was bunched in a scrunchie, and her pink, puffy face said she’d been crying. She looked like she’d rolled from bed and pulled on whatever was closest.

“Actually, yes,” Dell said when she recognized Nikki, an aide from the mayor’s office, stomping toward them. She held her phone in one hand and kept worriedly biting her plump bottom lip. Dell had only ever seen her in a skirt suit and heels, but even without makeup and her golden hair bouncing in styled curls, she knew her face. “I wonder what she’s doing here.”

Thinking it was an odd coincidence she was on her street, and she might blow right past them, Dell found herself blinking in shock when Nikki turned and pushed reporters out of the way to climb the front steps, like she knew the path well.

“Ma’am, who are you?” one of the reporters asked. “Why are you here?”

“Can you tell us anything about what happened inside?” another demanded.

Nikki shoved her way through them, trying to shield her face. “No comment,” she snapped.

“Who is she?” Cole said as he hurried after Dell.

She’d quickly sped up to follow Nikki up the stairs.

“She works with Tommy in the mayor’s office. I don’t know what she’s doing here, unless Evelyn is still inside.” She looked over her shoulder and didn’t see the mayor’s SUV. Even her parents’ cars were gone. Everyone must have gone to the hospital.

“Ma’am, are you related to the owners?” a reporter called out. “How do you know them?”

Nikki ignored them and stopped at the front door to knock. Then she rang the doorbell and knocked again.

Dell marched right up beside her and studied her face. Her skin, still supple with the youth of someone in her twenties, was pale and waxy. Smudges of leftover mascara rimmed beneath her teary eyes. She’d chewed her lip hard enough to peel back a little flap of skin. She all but vibrated with nerves while she waited for someone to answer the door.

Dell didn’t think anyone was home, but when Tommy opened the door, and Nikki almost collapsed with relief, the feeling in Dell’s dead chest nearly knocked her down.

“Oh, thank God,” Nikki blurted.

“Nik, what are you doing here?” Tommy said in a rush. He nervously looked at the reporters and then pulled her inside. The door slammed in Dell’s shocked face.

“I knew the son was still home!” one of the reporters said. “He never left with the rest of them.”

“Who do you think she is to him?” another asked.

“I bet she’s the mistress.”

Dell stood there gaping and trying to process feelings that were at once overwhelming and only half there. Still, even blunted, the shock felt like a sword through her middle.

“Um, Ms. Rodgers—” Cole attempted to say from where he’d joined her on the porch, but she silenced him with a glare.

Without a second’s hesitation, she stepped through the closed door and found herself in the entryway of her house, inches from her fiancé wrapped around another woman.

“I’m sorry,” Nikki blubbered into his chest. “I know I shouldn’thave come, but I saw on the news”—she cut off with a hiccup—“that there was abody, and then—” Another gasp and a hiccup. “And then you weren’t answering your phone, and I wassoworried. I just had to—” She buried her face in his chest again.

The shard of Dell’s brain still clinging to hope this dramatic scene was simply one worried coworker being comforted by another died like the rest of her when Tommy gently petted Nikki’s hair and kissed her temple.

“I’m fine, baby. I’m fine,” he soothed her. “My mom took away my phone, so I couldn’t call you. But I’m okay.” They continued to tug at each other, caressing and soothing until their mouths met, and Dell had to look away.

A raw rage rattled around inside her, tempered only by shock but still at a powerful enough voltage to make her suddenly understand how someone could commit a crime of passion.

“Can a ghost murder someone?” she numbly asked Cole as her fiancé continued to make out with another woman right in front of her.

He gave her a tortured look. “Ms. Rodgers, I don’t think harming her will—”

“Not her,” she said with fire in her veins. “Him.”