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outside package.
    Her inner teenager whined, The next time I saw JC, I wanted to look amazing .
    She told the slut to shut up.
    She’d managed to not think about JC Dimitrak for nearly six years. There was no reason to change anything today.
    Except now she looked like a murder suspect. She didn’t have a choice whether or not to talk to him.
    But jeez—who’d have thought JC “Just Crazy” Dimitrak would end up in law enforcement?
    Still, it was done. Seventh layer of hell, between the reunion with JC and Marcy’s horrible death, but she’d survived. Running away, selling Desert Accounting at a bargain-basement price, sounded amazingly attractive at the moment. She could move back to civilization on the west side of the Cascades and never have to deal with any of it again.
    Too bad it was all a fantasy. She couldn’t run out on her mother.
    She wandered into the living room, or as her friends had dubbed it, the construction disaster area. For a second, she imagined a soft leather sofa in front of the fireplace, books piled on shelves, a cashmere throw, and nothing to do on a Sunday afternoon except slip away into a good story.
    No such luck.
    Alex peeled himself off the floor.
    She started and covered a flinch. “You’re still here.” She’d hoped Alex had acted on her subtle suggestion. Go home.
    “Thought you might need me.” He stretched, a long muscular display.
    Tell me you did not just pose.
    He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Sorry you had to see Marcy like that.”
    An image of the shattered corpse they’d found in the bog pounced and Holly’s stomach cramped.
    “How’re you doing?” Alex asked.
    “I’m a little weirded out. It still doesn’t seem real.” Too restless to be confined, she twitched a shoulder, dislodged his arm, and moved toward the windows. “Did I ever tell you about the first time I met Marcy?”
    He shook his head.
    “I’d gone over to Stevens Ventures to talk to Tim, probably something about payroll. Anyway, I heard this lilting voice from his office, crooning, ‘Where are you, you little bugger?’ ”
    She smiled at the memory. “For a minute I did wonder what was going on, but curiosity got the better of me. I peeked in the door and saw Marcy’s butt wagging in the air. She was crawling out backward from under the desk, holding a metal knob like a trophy.”
    Holly raised her hand in remembered imitation. “She sat back on her heels, going, ‘Now I have to figure out how it fits back together.’ And she laughed. It was pure happiness, the kind of laugh you can’t help joining, when you’re just glad to be alive.”
    Her echoing laughter escaped as a muffled sob. “Except now she’s dead.”
    Alex crossed the room and pulled her close. “Hey. It’s okay. Marcy was a sweet kid. I remember when she started working for Tim. She was like a puppy, wanting to please so bad she about quivered.”
    Holly frowned and moved back, not sure she liked the analogy. “She always struck me as confident and outgoing.”
    “She is now. Well, I mean, she was. I mean, she opened up after she’d been working there for a while.”
    “I can’t get my head around the reality—she’s dead.”
    Alex dropped his hands onto her waist. His tone moved into the husky range. “But we’re alive.”
    Oh, no . He couldn’t mean that affirmation-of-life-through-sex thing. It was so not the time for an intimate moment. And then there was the whole was-he-the-right-guy issue.
    Alex? Their relationship hadn’t reached that level, and she wasn’t sure it ever would. Today’s events had convinced her Alex was someone to do stuff with, period. Definitely better than watching Friday night movies alone, but not anyone she wanted as a close, long-term addition in her life. “Look, all I can see right now is those birds and a mangled body. I haven’t even started to process the fact that Marcy won’t be in the office tomorrow.”
    Sex was so not happening.
    Still, she didn’t