She sank down on one end of her couch and closed her eyes as her body relaxed. She tried to imagine what that would have been like: stuffed in the trunk of a car, surely thinking her life was over, then seeing light as the trunk latch let go. Hope would have surged, would have urged her to do something to save herself no matter how impossible it seemed. Adrenaline would have given her the strength to sit up. What would have pushed her out of that rolling coffin? Bravery? Fear? In Nikki’s experience, those were two halves of the same emotion. You couldn’t be brave without knowing fear.

And that moment—when bravery tipped the scale—was what brought tears to her eyes. That was the moment an ordinary human became a hero. She had no idea who that young woman was or what she had done that had somehow, some way, led her to become a victim of a violent crime. The guys in the squad had already started calling her Zombie Doe. But in this it didn’t matter who she was. That emotion was universally human: the overriding need to fight for life. And when that fight ended in triumph, it brought the highest high. And when it ended in defeat . . . it brings me, Liska thought.

It would be her job, and Kovac’s, to put a real name to Zombie Doe, to find her family, to devastate them with the news of what had happened to their daughter, their sister, their niece, their grandchild.

Liska had learned the lesson long ago—that no one dies in a vacuum. Everyone’s life touches someone for good or for ill. Almost everyone. The few left over who died unknown and unclaimed were buried by the city and mourned in only the most abstract way by the people who had dealt with their bodies.

The person sleeping on the other two-thirds of her couch began to stir beneath the thick burgundy chenille throw. A leg moved, an arm stretched, a head emerged, big brown eyes blinking.

Marysue Zaytoun sat up with a smile on her lovely face, looking fresh and well rested. “Hi, Nikki. Happy New Year.”

“I hope so,” Liska said. “It’s not off to a good start.”

Marysue frowned. “It was a bad date?”

“Murder. I mean an actual murder,” Liska said. “Half an hour before ‘Auld Lang Syne’ I got called to a scene. So much for my big date.”

At least she had driven herself to the party, knowing she was on call, knowing there was a better-than-even chance her phone would ring. She kept a change of clothes in the car for just that reason.

“And here I thought you must have gotten lucky,” Marysue said.

All Liska had texted her was a cryptic Going 2 b late. Can U stay?

“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Marysue. Thanks so much for staying with the boys. I owe you. Again.”

Marysue touched her fingertips to her dark hair and it fell perfectly in place. There were no red creases on her face from pressing into the pillow. There was no mascara smudged beneath her eyes. She was perfect. And on top of being perfect, she was sweet and kind and generous. An angel in the guise of Officer Bobby Zaytoun’s little sister. Liska couldn’t have conjured up a more perfect renter unless she could have gotten all of Marysue’s fine qualities in the body of George Clooney.

“I’m glad to help. With Kevin out of town, my idea of the perfect New Year’s Eve is curling up with a good book anyway. I have no interest in being out on the roads with a bunch of drunken fools.”

There was the soft sound of the South in her voice. The Zaytouns hailed from North Carolina. Marysue had followed her brother north. She worked from home as a website designer and manager to pay the bills, and worked in her spare time on designing her own line of clothing. Fashion was her passion. But her personal style transcended what she wore. Marysue could have put on the proverbial burlap sack with the perfect accessory and be hailed as a chic sensation all over town. Her fiancé, Kevin Boyle, was a lucky man.

“So how was your evening?” Liska asked. “What did you guys do?”

“Ate pizza, played video games, watched a movie about aliens invading the planet. Darn near everything blew up by the end of it.”

“An R.J. classic.”

Guns, bombs, Transformers, aliens, shoot-outs, explosions—that was her youngest. He was a boy bursting at the seams with life. With R.J. everything was on the surface. He wore his heart on his sleeve and his emotions on his face. Thirteen now, he was looking more and more like his father—blue eyes full of mischief, blond hair full of cowlicks, and a crooked grin that could stop a girl’s heart. Unlike Speed, he was loyal to a fault.

“What about Kyle? What time did he get home from his party?”

Marysue frowned. “A little after ten. I don’t think he had a very good time. He came in and went straight up to his room.”

Liska sighed. Kyle was fifteen, quiet, too sensitive, internalizing everything and giving nothing away. He had broken up with his first girlfriend before Nikki had even known he had one. And she might never have known if she hadn’t had to dig through the trash for a permission slip R.J. had accidentally thrown away. Only then had she found the torn photograph of Kyle with a pretty, smiling blond-haired girl. When she had tried to broach the subject with him, he had gone within himself and slammed the door shut.

She worried about him in a way she didn’t worry about her youngest. When R.J. got in trouble, it was right out there for all the world to see. In fact, he was usually the first one to tell her about it. And R.J.’s trouble was the obvious kind. He threw a baseball and accidentally busted a car window. He got sent to the principal’s office for making farting noises with his armpit during class. A bully picked on a friend after school, and he kicked the bully’s ass.

Kyle was another matter. Bright and artistic, he had won a scholarship to the Performance Scholastic Institute, a prestigious private school for academically and artistically gifted students Nikki would never have been able to afford to send him to otherwise. His acceptance to PSI had helped prompt her to make the move from St. Paul.

The school had seemed a perfect fit for him the first year. He had welcomed the academic challenge and thrived in his art classes. The girlfriend had happened over the summer. Things had begun to slide ever so slightly downhill from there. His guidance counselor had felt a need to express concern at the fall parent-teacher conference. Kyle’s grades had slipped a bit. He had become uncommunicative with school staff and was having trouble getting along with some of the other students. He didn’t seem to have many close friends. He hadn’t done anything wrong, the counselor stressed. He wasn’t in any kind of trouble, and yet . . .

Nikki’s worry was that, like the secret girlfriend, she would find out about Kyle’s trouble only after the disaster, when the only thing left to do was to sweep up the pieces and put them in the trash.

Marysue pushed the throw aside and got up from the couch. There was barely a wrinkle in her chocolate brown velour tracksuit.

“I’m going to make breakfast,” she announced. “How would you like your eggs?”

“I think I’m out of eggs.”

“I’m not. Come over and eat something before you crash. You’ll worry better with a little protein in you.”

“Give me twenty minutes.”

As Marysue went out the front door, Nikki trudged up the stairs to the second floor, fantasizing about a hot shower. R.J.’s bedroom door was ajar. He was sprawled sideways across his bed as if he had fallen there, dead, one arm hanging over the side. She slipped into the room and covered him with the Vikings blanket he had gotten for Christmas. She brushed her fingers over the back of his head and smiled. He didn’t move, didn’t flinch. He slept the sleep of the innocent and unworried. She envied him.

Across the hall, the door to Kyle’s room was shut. The door was an amazing original work of art created by her son, a surreal, shadowed landscape in red, black, and white, with an elaborate, life-size Samurai warrior in the foreground, guarding the portal with a wicked sword raised above his head.