DD Warren 00 - The 7th Month

house, because your condo is too small. Or we could buy, or rent, or build a place on the moon if you prefer. But I love you. And I really, really,
really
love him, and I want us to be together. A criminalist, a detective, and a baby boy who’s going to grow up in a very interesting family.”
    “I don’t like being scared,” D.D. mumbled.
    Alex smiled down at her and their now sleeping child. “Honey, we’re parents. Better get used to it.”
    D.D. and Jack went home to Alex’s house. Her squadmates Phil and Neil helped pack up the few things she had in her condo, while a couple of neighbors helped paint the nursery. In a matter of days, it was done.
    Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren, on maternity leave, sharing closet space.
    Life is good, she decided, holding her baby close.
    And for six whole weeks, it was.

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    Catch Me

    On sale February 7, 2012

Chapter 1
    My name is Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant.
    I live in Boston, work in Boston, and in four days, will probably die here.
    I’m twenty-eight years old.
    And I don’t feel like dying just yet.
    It started two years ago, with the murder of my best friend, Randi Menke, in Providence. She was strangled in her living room. No sign of a struggle, no sign of forced entry. For a while the Rhode Island cops thought maybe her ex had done it. I guess there’d been a history of domestic assaults. Nothing she’d ever told me, or our other best friend, Jackie, about. Jackie and I tried to console ourselves with that, as we wept together at Randi’s funeral. We hadn’t known. We just hadn’t known or of course we would’ve done . . . something. Anything.
    That’s what we told ourselves.
    Fast forward one year. January 21. The anniversary. I’m at home with Aunt Nancy in the mountains of northern New Hampshire, Jackie’s returned to her corporate life as a VP for Coca-Cola in Atlanta. Jackie doesn’t want to mark the occasion of Randi’s murder. Too morbid, she tells me. Later, in the summer, we’ll get together and celebrate Randi’s birthday. Maybe we’ll hike to the top of Mount Washington, bring a bottle of single malt. We’ll have a good drink, have a good cry, then sleep it off at the Lake of the Clouds AMC hut.
    I still call Jackie on the twenty-first. Can’t help myself. Except she doesn’t answer. Not her landline, not her work line, not her mobile. Nothing.
    In the morning, when she doesn’t show up for work, the police finally give in to my pleas and drive by her house.
    No sign of a struggle, I will read later in the police report. No sign of forced entry. Just a lone female, strangled to death in the middle of her home on January 21.
    Two best friends, murdered, exactly one year and roughly one thousand miles apart.
    The locals investigated. Even the FBI gave it a whirl. They couldn’t find anything definitive to link the two homicides, mostly because they couldn’t find anything that was definitive.
    Bad luck, one of the guys actually told me. Sheer bad luck.
    Today is January 17 of the third year.
    How much bad luck do you think I’m going to have on the twenty-first? And if you were me, what would you do?
    I met Randi and Jackie when I was eight years old. After that final incident with my mother, I was sent to live with my aunt Nancy in the wilds of New Hampshire. She came to fetch me from a hospital in upstate New York, two relatives, two strangers, meeting for the first time. Aunt Nancy took one look at me and started to cry.
    “I didn’t know,” she told me that first day. “Trust me, child, I didn’t know or I would’ve taken you years ago.”
    I didn’t cry. Saw no purpose for the tears and didn’t know if I believed her anyway. If I was supposed to live with this woman, then I’d live with this woman. Not like I had anyplace else to go.
    Aunt Nancy ran a B&B in a quaint resort town in the Mount Washington Valley, where rich Bostonians and privileged New Yorkers came to ski during the winter, hike in the summer, and “leaf-peep” in the fall. She had one part-time helper, but mostly my aunt relied on herself to greet guests, clean rooms, set up tea, cook breakfast, provide directions, and all the other million little odd jobs that go into the hospitality trade. When I came along, I took over dusting and vacuuming. I could spend hours cleaning. I loved the scent of Pine-Sol. I