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  Elke stepped back from the podium, closing her folder. “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen of the panel. The CRU rests.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Saanvi and Kevin walked out the steps of the courthouse, arm in arm, surrounded on either side by Kevin’s parents and Saanvi’s grandparents. Pretty much everyone was crying.

  It was a chilly winter day, cloudy, but the sun peeked out as they made their way to their freedom.

  Elke, Frankie, Iain, and Amos came behind them, and Elke couldn’t remember ever feeling quite so good after a verdict before. Sure, there was a satisfaction in putting away criminals, but this feeling was so much more intense. She had a feeling of extreme rightness. She had corrected a wrong that had been done to these individuals, and now things could go back to the way they were supposed to be. It was heady. She really, really liked it.

  Even though she’d taken this job with the thought that she’d make a name for herself and go back to prosecuting, she realized that she didn’t want to go back to her old job. Instead, she wanted to do this again. She wanted to right more wrongs, free more innocent people. Maybe this was what she’d always been meant to do.

  As they all reached the bottom of the steps, they were swarmed by reporters, who stuck their microphones in Saanvi’s and Kevin’s dazed faces.

  “How does it feel to be freed after twenty-five years in prison?”

  Saanvi blinked, shielding her face from flashing cameras. She didn’t say anything.

  Kevin smiled, but he too seemed unable to form words.

  The reporters moved their microphones to the parents and grandparents.

  “It’s amazing,” said Clara Greene. “We always hoped this day would come. We never gave up on our son. We knew one day we’d be bringing him home.”

  “We’re so pleased,” said Tobias Austin. “Both that our granddaughter is free and that we know who really took our daughter Tempest from us.”

  The reporters had seen Elke and the others now. They hurried forward to ask questions of them as well. The inevitable question about Felix came first, but while it stung, it wasn’t as bad as Elke thought it would be.

  She managed a smile. “Well, it turned out my husband was guilty, and I don’t defend the guilty. What we do, the CRU, is advocate for the innocent. Today, we freed two innocent people, and that’s a good day’s work if you ask me.”

  “What about friction with the DA’s office and the police department?” called another reporter.

  “I can assure you,” said Elke, “there is no friction.”

  “Can you comment on the arrest of the Haven Hills Ripper? Is that within the purview of the CRU?”

  “We fight for justice,” said Elke. She smiled. “We’re the good guys, and we’re just getting started. If there are other people who have been wrongly convicted, we are going to root those cases out, and free those people. But we’re not the story here. Saanvi Mukherjee and Kevin Greene are.”

  The reporters looked back at them, as if they’d just remembered their existence. They all ran back for the two, repeating their first question.

  “How does it feel?”

  Saanvi blinked. She glanced at Kevin and then back at the reporters. She smiled slowly. “It feels… unreal.”

  * * *

  Elke told the others to take the rest of the day, but to be ready to come back Monday morning to start digging into another case.

  She got a phone call from DA Andrews, congratulating her on the first case and on the way she handled the press. He said that he wanted more of the same the next time around.

  She drove Amos home to his apartment and made sure he was securely locked inside before heading back to her own. He was still nervous being alone, but she knew the feeling. Every time she went into her own home, she searched the place, knife in hand. She’d even taken to leaving the closet doors open all the time and she never closed the shower curtain.

  Also, she’d had a new lock installed. It didn’t claim to be unpickable, but it was apparently pretty hard to pick, and that was better than nothing.

  Even still, she felt good as she set the knife down in the kitchen and took a bottle of wine out of the refrigerator. She had her new apartment and her new job, and she felt transformed. The woman who’d been half of a couple, one side of Felix-and-Elke, that woman felt far away from her.

  She was sure that was a good thing.

  * * *

  Iain rolled over and collided with something in his bed.

  Startled, he woke up immediately, only to realize that he wasn’t in his bed, he was in Harley’s, and that he’d stayed there the entire night, heretofore something he’d never done. Ever. He felt a slight stab of panic and the urge to get up, get dressed, and drive home as fast as he could.

  But Harley stirred beside him and sleepily wrapped her arm around his neck and pulled him back down next to her. “Morning,” she whispered.

  He resisted for a moment. But she was warm and soft, and there was something nice about waking up here, about not being alone. So he relaxed.

  She snuggled close. “You freaking out?”

  “No,” he said.

  She laughed. “Liar.”

  He laughed too, and then pulled her close and kissed her neck. “It’s fine, really.”

  She wriggled around to face him. “So, what do you think? We can do this?”

  “I don’t know yet. I just woke up.”

  “You said you wanted to have me all to yourself,” she said. “And I said if we were going to do that, this would have to be more like a relationship.”

  He kissed her forehead. “This isn’t enough like a relationship for you?”

  She stretched, yawning. “I don’t know. I think maybe it might be, but only if you stick around and let me make you breakfast. And we drink coffee in our pajamas and laze around the whole morning without taking a shower.”

  He wrinkled up his nose. “No shower?”

  She giggled. “Do I smell?”

  He took a deep breath. “All right, no shower.”

  She smiled in triumph. “Good. Because weird people like us need to stick together. We’re good together, Iain, we really are.”

  He smiled too. “What’s for breakfast?”

  “Bacon, eggs, home fries, the triumvirate of breakfast,” she said.

  “Triumvirate? You know that word?”

  She punched him playfully, and crawled out of bed.

  He lay back on the pillow and watched her shrug a robe over her bare skin. Maybe he could get used to this. Maybe he even liked this.

  She grinned on him. “Next time we stay at your place.”

  His stomach knotted up. “One thing at a time, huh?”

  She laughed as she left the bedroom.

  * * *

  Back before Elke met Felix, when she was single, she used to have a terror of dining alone. She would be worried about what people thought of her, sitting alone at a table in a restaurant with no one to sit with her.

  She imagined that everyone who saw her was pitying her. They probably thought that she’d been stood up by someone—a boyfriend or a friend—and that now she was waiting for them, feeling rejected.

  Pity made her feel awful, and so she wouldn’t eat by herself. She needed to be with someone else to show her face in public.

  But that Saturday morning, Elke decided she didn’t give a hoot what anyone thought. And she didn’t care if anyone did pity her. The joke would be on them. She didn’t need any pity. She had things under control, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever been happier.

  Even in the first days of her courtship with Felix, when the world seemed bright and love was in the air, she had owed her happiness to another person. But this satisfaction she felt now, this happiness, it came from her own efforts. It was hers and hers alone.

  She wanted to go out and celebrate. And she didn’t need anyone to accompany her.

  So, she got up, got dressed, and headed out for the Hearty Skillet, a restaurant that had a
brunch buffet to die for.

  When she entered, the hostess looked over her shoulder, waiting for someone else. After a long pause, she realized. “Just one?”

  Elke nodded. “Just one.”

  “Follow me,” said the hostess.

  Elke ordered coffee and orange juice and started to head for the buffet.

  Her phone rang.

  She sat back down to look at the number. It was Lulu, her real estate agent. “Hello?” said Elke.

  “Great news,” said Lulu. “We’ve got an offer on the house.”

  “Really?” said Elke.

  “Yes,” said Lulu. “And they’ve gone a thousand above asking price, which is much better than we’d hoped for.”

  “That’s great,” said Elke.

  “I’ll email you the details, but I thought you’d want to know right away.”

  “Absolutely,” said Elke. “I’m so pleased.” The house would be gone, and with it, the last of her ties to her old life. Elke would shrug that off, and she would move into the future. For the first time in a long time, she felt light and airy, as if the house had been a weight on her shoulders that had now been lifted.

  She sucked in a breath and looked out the window into the morning sun, smiling.

  * * *

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