“Who knows you’re up here?” he asked quietly. He’d asked her the same question yesterday, but he wondered if she’d have a different answer now.

Her hands stopped midscrub and wide brown eyes met his. “What are you asking?”

“I’m asking if there is someone who’d like to hurt you or Violet,” he whispered.

Her horrified gaze flew to her daughter, who sat on the couch with her knees up under her chin and Oro pulled tightly to her side.

“No one wants to hurt us,” she hissed at him.

“Think hard. You’ve been possibly drugged, nearly burned, and now shot at. Think!”

“We just happened to be in the path of some crazy people in the woods! I’m not a target for anyone!” She kept her voice to a harsh whisper, glancing nervously at Violet to make certain she hadn’t heard.

She could whisper all she wanted. Chris suspected Violet knew and heard a lot her mother didn’t want her to. He studied Gianna’s expression, searching for deceit, and didn’t see it. But he did see doubt; his questions had rattled her, and he wondered if she was playing down his concerns in an attempt not to alarm Violet.

It’s time for both of them to be alarmed.

“I think someone is focused on you or Violet,” he stated slowly. “And I’m going to operate as if they’re coming here next.”

“Operate? What the hell are you?”

“Someone who knows how to stay under the radar and protect myself.”

Silent eyes searched his. “What happened to you?” she whispered.

He shook his head. “No time for that now.”

The flash of pain in Chris’s eyes vanished immediately. He might have scars on his neck and face, but he had even bigger ones on the inside. Scars that’d toughened him into some sort of robotic human. He’d barely shown any emotion since she’d returned. He’d acted and spoken as if people were shot every day and they just needed to follow a checklist to handle the situation.

Gianna didn’t know whether to pity him or be thankful.

A little of both.

She blew out a breath and looked down at her coat. It was ruined. Her scrubbing had pushed the blood deep into the fibers and she knew it’d never come out. She didn’t care; she had no desire to wear the coat again. Frisco’s open skull flashed through her mind. She’d seen a lot of head injuries come across her table, and she’d neatly opened plenty of skulls. But she’d never been present when lives had been obliterated.

Oh, Lord.

Her vision tunneled, and she leaned forward on her hands as her knees suddenly felt liquid. Chris grabbed her shoulder and shoved a stool against the backs of her thighs. She sat and rested her forehead on the countertop, waiting for her blood pressure to normalize.

What if the shot hit me instead? What would have happened to Violet?

“Mom?”

“I’m fine. Just a bit dizzy all of a sudden.” To her ears, her voice sounded too high.

Chris rubbed at her shoulder. “Take your time,” he said softly. “It’ll pass. It’s just everything catching up with her,” he said to Violet, who’d moved off the couch.

She thought back to Chris’s question. “The agent who rented me the cabin is the only person who knows we’re here,” she said quietly. “I may have mentioned to some friends back home in New York that we were taking off for a few days, but I never said where we were going. I mainly said something to let them know why I wouldn’t be answering any calls or emails. Same with the new office in Portland. I only said I was going to be unreachable for a while.” Her vision started to clear, and she sat up to meet his serious gaze. “That’s the truth.”

He nodded. “Can you think of anyone who’d be angry or upset enough to want to harm you? Did you piss anyone off because you didn’t report the autopsy results they wanted to hear?”

She understood his question. Relatives didn’t want to hear that their loved ones had committed suicide or indulged in dangerous behavior that’d taken their lives. Sometimes a relative would swear their loved one had never, in their entire life, touched the drug that had shown up in the tox report. Or Gianna wouldn’t be able to pinpoint a cause of death—it happened. Concrete evidence was always needed. She couldn’t assign a cause of death based on her suspicions. She’d been questioned on her results several times; it came with the job. Yes, there had been people who had disliked her results, but not enough to want to harm her.

I don’t think they would.

“What? You’ve thought of something.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” she said hesitantly. She’d firmly put the Sullivan case out of her mind, but Chris’s prodding had brought it to the forefront. It was the only one—that she was aware of—that would fit his description. The Sullivan family had a few nuts in its tree. “I don’t think this is the time to sit down and analyze my past, right? I don’t want to make guesses about the past, and we need to worry about the right now.”

“True.” His gaze prodded her.

“Trust me. I haven’t thought of anyone who’d come three thousand miles to burn down a cabin in the woods.” Truth. “Frisco said that the county sheriff’s department had their hands full with that big pileup on the highway. Maybe that’s where we should go, to be near some police. We need to let them know what’s happened, and we can’t just leave Frisco out there.”