Free Retribution: The Second Chances Trilogy Book Three by M Mayle

leave as though she were going a greater distance than downstairs.
    “Emmy?” Laurel calls out as her sister nears the stairwell. “Come back for a minute, will you?”
    “You change your mind?” Emily returns to the doorway. “You wanna blow off the meeting with the detective?”
    Laurel beckons Emily across the threshold and back into the supposed sorrow-free zone. “No, I haven’t changed my mind. I’m still willing to meet with Grillo.” She maneuvers Emily to the foot of the bed, invites her to sit, indicating the spot Colin occupied last night when he was given the news. “This is about something else.” Laurel sits down beside her. “Something unrelated. I was just wondering . . . I was wondering if you would consider taking your sophomore year abroad.”
    “Isn’t that supposed to be junior year?” Emily lifts a skeptical eyebrow.
    “Traditionally, but I feel sure an exception could be made.”
    “But why? Why now when I’m already registered at New Haven and due there next week?”
    “I’m going to have a baby in February and I’d love it if you were nearby.”
    “Omigod-omigod-omigod,” Emily gasps, wide-eyed, openmouthed, hands against cheeks in a replay of her reaction the day she first met Colin. “You’re not shitting me, are you? Just to make me feel better?”
    “I most definitely am not shitting you.” Laurel retrieves the sonogram evidence from the bedside chest where it spent the night. “Here.” She hands it to Emily and gets the desired reaction.
    “Does anyone else know?” Emily says.
    “Colin knows, of course. I told him last night and I’ll tell the others after the detective leaves.”
    “Oh, wow. This is
so
cool. Something we can be
happy
about.”
    “My thought exactly,” Laurel says. “Now scoot so I can straighten up the room and get dressed.”
    The prevailing mood in the kitchen is one of nervous anticipation. But it’s not her arrival that has them on edge. During an impromptu briefing from Amanda, no reference is made to last night’s disturbance and if Colin told anyone of her pregnancy, the news is secondary to the imminent arrival of Detective Grillo. She’s out of the spotlight, for which she should be glad, and would be if her sense of foreboding wasn’t gorging on atmospheric conditions.
    “What did Grillo say to Nate when he called? Have they caught the guy? Is this good news we’re waiting for?” Laurel asks Amanda.
    “I don’t know. Nate didn’t go into it other than to say there may be a break in the case.”
    Before Amanda can be pressed further, the cook-housekeeper interrupts to ask if coffee will be served in the dining room or the library. Then Ben and Mike want to know how much longer they’ll be under house arrest, and Emily darts reproving glances when Laurel turns down the offer of a full breakfast from one of the kitchen helpers.
    Nate and Colin break out of their huddle with Bemus and Tom Jensen at the other end of the room. Laurel moves in their direction, zeroing in on Colin, intending to thank him for helping her get through the night and allowing her to sleep in this morning. But before she can murmur even an affectionate greeting, the chime announces Grillo’s arrival.
    If Detective Grillo is affected by the artwork in the library, he doesn’t show it in any conventional way. And he refuses an offer of coffee and a chair at the table where she, Nate, Amanda, and Colin are now seated on pins and needles. Instead, Grillo holds forth on foot and from a defining distance, plunging in—much as Emily did earlier—without preamble.
    “The task force has recovered the Sebastian murder weapon,” he says to a chorus of released breath. “A Bowie-style knife with a nine-inch blade was found on the unimproved slope behind the Chandler property. Evidence in the same area indicates the perpetrator may have fled the scene on a bicycle and taken a hard spill causing him to drop the knife.”
    “The . . . knife,” Laurel says.