“What was missing?”
“Her head.”
Sara let out a long groan. She hated head wounds. “Are you sure it’s a suicide?”
“That’s what we need to find out. There was a discrepancy with the ammo.”
Sara listened as he filled her in on what had happened this morning, from his interview with Andy Rosen’s parents to finding Ellen Schaffer. She stopped him at the arrow Matt had found traced into the dirt outside Schaffer’s window. “That’s what I did,” she told him. “To mark the trail when I was looking for Tessa.”
“I know,” he said, but offered nothing more.
“Is that why you didn’t want to tell me?” Sara asked. “I don’t like you withholding information from me. It’s not your decision—”
With sudden vehemence he said, “I want you to be careful, Sara. I don’t want you going on that school campus alone. I don’t want you around any of the crime scenes. Do you understand me?”
She did not answer, mostly out of shock.
“And you’re not staying at your house alone.”
Sara could not stop herself. “Hold on—”
“I’ll sleep on your couch if that’s what it takes,” he interrupted. “This is not about getting you to spend the night with me. This is about me not needing another person to worry about right now.”
“Do you think you need to be worried about me?”
“Did you think you needed to be worried about Tessa?”
“That’s not the same.”
“That arrow could mean something. It could be pointing back toward you.”
“People draw marks in the dirt with their shoe all the time.”
“You think it’s just a coincidence? Ellen Schaffer’s head is blown off—”
“Unless she did it herself.”
“Don’t interrupt me,” he warned, and she would have laughed if his words were not tempered with his obvious concern for her safety. “I’m telling you, I’m not going to leave you alone.”
“We’re not even sure if this is murder, Jeffrey. Except for a few things that are out of place—and those could be explained away easily enough—this could prove to be a suicide.”
“So you think Andy killed himself and Tess was stabbed and this girl today killed herself and they’re all unrelated?”
Sara knew it was not likely but still said, “It’s possible.”
“Yeah, well,” he said, “a lot of things are possible, but you’re not staying alone in town tonight. Is that understood?”
Sara could only offer her silence as acquiescence.
He said, “I don’t know what else to do, Sara. I can’t worry about you like that. I can’t feel like you’re in jeopardy. I won’t be able to function.”
“It’s okay,” she finally said, trying to sound as though she understood. Sara realized that what she’d been looking forward to most was being in her own house, sleeping in her own bed, alone.