Free Darker After Midnight by Lara Adrián Page B

about?”
    “Come with me, please.” He walked her through the crowds and into the front entrance of the building. The lobby was busy with more uniformed officers and armed men in SWAT gear. The detective paused with her, his face fatigued, aging him even more. “When did you last speak to or see Senator Clarence, Tavia?”
    The cold knot in her stomach got even harder. “Last night, when he dropped me off at home.”
    “Do you remember what time that was?”
    She shook her head. “I’m not sure. It was right after we left the police station. Has something happened to him? Is that what all this is about?”
    Detective Avery braced his fists on his hips and exhaled a heavy sigh. “There’s no easy way to say it, I’m afraid. Someone broke into his house overnight and … attacked him. He was killed, Tavia. He and a couple of his security guards as well.”
    “What?” She struggled to process the news, even though her instincts had already been warning her that something terrible had occurred. Shock crept over her—shock and disbelief. “This can’t be happening. Senator Clarence can’t be dead. He was supposed to give a speech today at a hospital charity breakfast …”
    Avery laid his hand consolingly on her shoulder. “We’re gonna catch this guy. Don’t you worry about that, all right?”
    She mutely shook her head, trying to make some sense out of the awful news. Looking for explanations, answers. “The man last night at the station—he warned that the senator was in danger. You heard what he said, didn’t you? He said someone wanted to kill Senator Clarence. Someone called Dragos.”
    A harsh scoff sounded from beside her. Tavia looked over and met the hard gaze of a uniformed policeman who had drifted overwhile she and Detective Avery were talking. A scar split the dark slash of his left eyebrow, making his scowl look even more severe. “Nothing but bullshit out of that bastard. Shoulda pumped his skull full of bullets. Maybe that woulda kept him down.”
    At Tavia’s confused look, Avery said, “The man we had in custody … he escaped last night from the infirmary.”
    “Escaped,” she murmured. “I don’t understand. How is that possible?”
    “We’re trying to figure that out ourselves. I saw the guy when he was brought out of the lineup room. He was in bad shape. Somehow he managed to overcome a two-hundred-pound male nurse, knocking him unconscious before slipping out of the building unnoticed. I mean, the guy shouldn’t have been able to walk out of there on his own motor, let alone find his way to Marblehead to go after the senator like he did. I’ve never seen anything so brutal. So goddamn bloody.”
    Tavia swallowed past the lump of sadness and horror that had lodged in her throat.
    “I’m sorry,” Detective Avery said, looking at her in concern. “I realize you probably don’t need to hear the ugly details. You’ve been through quite a bit yourself lately.”
    “It’s all right.” She drew in a quick breath, regaining her composure. “I’ll be fine.”
    “We’d like you to come into the station, if you feel up to it. We have some more questions for you, and the feds will want to talk to you as well—”
    “Of course.”
    He gestured toward the door of the building, to where the reporters had seemed to multiply in the time since she’d been inside. “We can go now, before this place really turns into a zoo.”
    Tavia nodded, falling in behind him as he and a small group of uniformed officers escorted her out to a waiting police sedan.
    For a moment, as she stepped outside into the cold morning, she felt as though she were walking through a different world, one that didn’t belong to her. There was an unreal quality to everything, as though she were peering through the gauze of a veil, unable to see anything clearly.
    Or maybe it was simply that she didn’t want to see.
    She was unable to imagine the kind of man—the kind of inhuman lethality—it would