The 9th Girl Read Online Free Page B

up. What would have pushed her out of that rolling coffin? Bravery? Fear? In Nikki’s experience, those were two halves of the same emotion. You couldn’t be brave without knowing fear.
    And that moment—when bravery tipped the scale—was what brought tears to her eyes. That was the moment an ordinary human became a hero. She had no idea who that young woman was or what she had done that had somehow, some way, led her to become a victim of a violent crime. The guys in the squad had already started calling her Zombie Doe. But in this it didn’t matter who she was. That emotion was universally human: the overriding need to fight for life. And when that fight ended in triumph, it brought the highest high. And when it ended in defeat . . . it brings me, Liska thought.
    It would be her job, and Kovac’s, to put a real name to Zombie Doe, to find her family, to devastate them with the news of what had happened to their daughter, their sister, their niece, their grandchild.
    Liska had learned the lesson long ago—that no one dies in a vacuum. Everyone’s life touches someone for good or for ill. Almost everyone. The few left over who died unknown and unclaimed were buried by the city and mourned in only the most abstract way by the people who had dealt with their bodies.
    The person sleeping on the other two-thirds of her couch began to stir beneath the thick burgundy chenille throw. A leg moved, an arm stretched, a head emerged, big brown eyes blinking.
    Marysue Zaytoun sat up with a smile on her lovely face, looking fresh and well rested. “Hi, Nikki. Happy New Year.”
    “I hope so,” Liska said. “It’s not off to a good start.”
    Marysue frowned. “It was a bad date?”
    “Murder. I mean an actual murder,” Liska said. “Half an hour before ‘Auld Lang Syne’ I got called to a scene. So much for my big date.”
    At least she had driven herself to the party, knowing she was on call, knowing there was a better-than-even chance her phone would ring. She kept a change of clothes in the car for just that reason.
    “And here I thought you must have gotten lucky,” Marysue said.
    All Liska had texted her was a cryptic Going 2 b late. Can U stay?
    “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Marysue. Thanks so much for staying with the boys. I owe you. Again.”
    Marysue touched her fingertips to her dark hair and it fell perfectly in place. There were no red creases on her face from pressing into the pillow. There was no mascara smudged beneath her eyes. She was perfect. And on top of being perfect, she was sweet and kind and generous. An angel in the guise of Officer Bobby Zaytoun’s little sister. Liska couldn’t have conjured up a more perfect renter unless she could have gotten all of Marysue’s fine qualities in the body of George Clooney.
    “I’m glad to help. With Kevin out of town, my idea of the perfect New Year’s Eve is curling up with a good book anyway. I have no interest in being out on the roads with a bunch of drunken fools.”
    There was the soft sound of the South in her voice. The Zaytouns hailed from North Carolina. Marysue had followed her brother north. She worked from home as a website designer and manager to pay the bills, and worked in her spare time on designing her own line of clothing. Fashion was her passion. But her personal style transcended what she wore. Marysue could have put on the proverbial burlap sack with the perfect accessory and be hailed as a chic sensation all over town. Her fiancé, Kevin Boyle, was a lucky man.
    “So how was your evening?” Liska asked. “What did you guys do?”
    “Ate pizza, played video games, watched a movie about aliens invading the planet. Darn near everything blew up by the end of it.”
    “An R.J. classic.”
    Guns, bombs, Transformers, aliens, shoot-outs, explosions—that was her youngest. He was a boy bursting at the seams with life. With R.J. everything was on the surface. He wore his heart on his sleeve and his emotions on his