Gabe shook his head. “Probably not.”

Troy kept his voice down as he spoke. “When they got his body down from the ceiling fan, they took the belt off. You probably didn’t see this because of where he was hanging and because of the belt, but . . .”

A chill skated down Lucian’s spine as he glanced at his brother. “But what?”

“There were marks on his neck.” Troy drew in a deep breath. “Around where the belt was. They look like scratches. That means one of two things. He either got himself up there and had second thoughts, or he didn’t put that belt around his neck in the first place.”

Chapter 3

“Why do you have to leave me?” cried Anna. She stomped one heeled foot, thrusting out her lower lip as the bright blue drink sloshed over the rim of her glass. “Who is going to listen to me complain about my neighbors from hell or when I openly objectify the really hot pharmacy reps?”

Julia Hughes laughed at her coworker—well, her ex-coworker as of two hours ago. She and several of the nurses and staff from the center were at the bar a few blocks from where they worked, having a little going away party. Which was also turning into who was going to have the worse hangover in the morning.

Julia’s bets were on Anna.

“You still have Susan. She appreciates your tales of tribulations and she also likes checking out the reps.”

“Everyone likes checking them out, but you were the only single one left on our floor. I got to live vicariously through imagining you going out with them and having that nasty kind of sex that makes you walk funny afterward.”

Almost choking on her champagne, Julia lowered her glass.

Anna grinned and then took a healthy gulp of her drink. “And I can’t try to fix Susan up with any of them.”

“Lucky her, because those dates never turned out well,” Julia reminded her. Those dates had turned out really boring or ended up being no shows. There had been no in-betweens, and definitely no nasty sex that had left her needing a Tylenol the next day.

Julia leaned forward, placing her elbows on the round, high-top table. The hum of rock music grew louder while their group had spread throughout the bar. The congratulations cake someone had brought with them had been consumed within minutes of it being revealed. “I am going to miss you guys,” she said, drawing in a deep, stinging breath.

“I really can’t believe you’re doing this.” Anna leaned into her, sighing.

In all honesty, a huge part of Julia couldn’t believe she had quit her safe, secure nursing job and taken an in-home one several states away, in a different time zone. The decision had been so entirely out of character that her parents thought she was having some kind of midlife crisis a decade too soon.

The decision to apply for a traveling nursing job had been fueled by an empty bottle of wine and . . . a keen sense of desperation, a deep, almost all-consuming need for something, anything in her life to change. She’d almost forgotten about applying at the agency, so the call that came a week ago had been a shock. There was a job in Louisiana, in home, and offered the kind of pay that nearly floored her.

Julia’s initial reaction was to turn it down, but she didn’t listen to that dumb voice that kept her up late at night, the voice that caused every step of her life to be too measured and overcautious. So after signing a ton of forms, including a slew of nondisclosures that the agency assured her were common with certain situations, today had been her final day at the assisted living facility where she’d worked for the last three years. And that also meant that today was the last day of normalcy for her, because she’d done the unthinkable.

Well, at least for her it was since she’d lived like she was scared.

Scared of nothing in particular, but pretty much everything out there. She’d been scared of leaving home for college, scared of finishing her schooling and taking her first “real” job. Scared of flying. Scared of driving on highways. She’d feared that first date all those years ago that turned out to be one of the worse decisions in her life. And she’d been scared of leaving the person who had been chipping away at little pieces of her every day of her life.

Being scared hadn’t meant that she didn’t force herself to get over the fear, but it usually made her overanalyze and overthink every decision she made. It made things harder and it made accomplishing these things even more important.

She wasn’t living like that anymore—like she was seventy years old and had buried the love of her life three years ago instead of divorcing him, which was what had happened. These last three years had felt like she’d given up, was going quietly into the night.

Not anymore.

Most of her clothing had been shipped ahead and tomorrow she was boarding a plane.

“I’m proud of you,” Anna said, angling her body toward hers. “I’m going to miss you like hell, but I’m proud of you.”

“Thank you,” she mouthed, blinking back tears. She and Anna had grown close over the years. She knew what Julia had gone through with her ex. She knew how much of a big deal this was.

Anna leaned in again, kissing Julia’s cheek. Then she planted her chin on Julia’s shoulder. “What time is your flight?”

“It’s at ten, but I have to leave early to get to the airport.”

“But you don’t have to work first thing in the morning, so you know what that means?” Straightening, she tipped the bottom of Julia’s glass toward her mouth. “Time to drink up and get silly before we both end up crying in the corner of the bar like two losers. And we don’t want that.”

“No one wants that.” Grinning, she did just that. Well, sort of. Julia wasn’t much of a drinker, mainly because she didn’t like the idea of not having control of herself and she usually stuck to wine while she was at home. So she finished off her champagne and then halfway through the second flute of the bubbly stuff, her blood was cheerfully buzzing.

A few other nurses joined their table, and Anna disappeared to play a game of darts over on the other side of the bar. Julia tried to keep track of her, but as it grew later in the evening, the crowd thickened. She caught glimpses of the petite blonde every so often and the man she was playing darts with. He was tall, but then again, everyone standing next to Anna looked tall. His dark-colored shirt stretched over broad shoulders as he lifted an arm to throw a dart. Even from where Julia was standing, she could see how well formed his biceps were.

Whoever he was, he had a nice back.

Shaking her head, she refocused on the convo around her. Anna was married—happily so. She was just all over the place and made friends everywhere she went.

Everyone was talking about the new owners who’d taken over at the beginning of the year. All of them had been worried, unsure of what it meant long-term. Obviously, she didn’t have to worry about it anymore, but she was relieved for her coworkers that the new owners seemed to know what they were doing.

Since Julia had never done the traveling nurse gig and was unsure if she would take another after this upcoming assignment ended, she had no idea what to expect from her new employers. She answered to the agency she was hired through, but she also would answer to the family she would work for.

Toying with the base of her glass, she stopped her mind from wandering to what was going to happen tomorrow. She was nervous, understandably so, but she couldn’t allow herself to freak out. If she did, she’d start to panic and then she would second and third guess herself. At this point, it was too late to do—

“Julia!” chirped Anna a second before she grabbed her arm from behind. “There is someone I need you to meet.”

Oh God.

Whenever Anna had someone she needed her to meet, it was usually some eccentric rando she virtually just ran into that Julia really didn’t want to meet. Swallowing a groan, she slowly turned around and nearly dropped her glass as her gaze moved from Anna’s flushed, excited face to the man standing next to her.

Julia’s eyes widened as she got an eyeful of the stranger. Holy mother . . . It was like her brain short-circuited and emptied of all useful thought. It was the man Anna had been playing darts with. She knew this because it was the same dark shirt that turned out to be a thermal with the sleeves pushed up to the elbows, and he was tall. Not just because he was standing next to a demented pixie at the moment, but he was a good foot or so taller than Julia, and she wasn’t a short woman.