‘I started to ask, but that’s when the first shot was fired and she collapsed. The only other words she said were “Help” and “Malaya”. Then she was gone.’

‘Malaya.’ Deacon was already typing on his phone. ‘She could have been talking about a place. A reference to modern-day Malaysia.’

‘Or it could have been a word,’ Marcus added quietly. ‘Tagalog for “freedom”.’

‘Tagalog,’ Scarlett murmured. ‘A dialect of Filipino, right?’ Which would make sense. The girl’s ethnicity was Southeast Asian. That included the Philippines.

Marcus nodded once. ‘Yes.’

Deacon glanced at him with interest. ‘You speak Tagalog?’

‘No. It’s also a newspaper based out of Manila,’ Marcus answered.

‘How do you know that?’ Deacon asked, more curious than suspicious.

Marcus shrugged. ‘My family is in the newspaper business. My grandfather read five papers before breakfast every morning when I was a boy. He collected the front pages of papers with famous headlines. One was from the Malaya, on the day Marcos was exiled. I asked him what it was all about, and he told me that malaya meant freedom.’

‘You remembered that, after all this time?’ Scarlett asked. ‘That was nearly thirty years ago. You couldn’t have been more than four or five years old.’

Another shrug. ‘I remember nearly everything he ever said. This one word was very important to him, though. He’d been in the Philippines during the war, made friends with some of the locals. They were prisoners together. In Bataan.’

As one, Scarlett and Deacon winced. ‘Rough,’ Scarlett murmured.

‘Yeah. Malaya was one of the first words my grandfather learned there.’

‘So what do you think Tala meant?’ Scarlett asked.

‘I think she wanted me to help free her family. Trouble is, I don’t know where she came from. I don’t know where her family is being kept.’

‘Detective Bishop said you met Tala at the park,’ Deacon said.

‘Not exactly. I never actually met her until tonight. I’d only see her at the park. Up until tonight, it’s been me asking her questions and her running away without answering.’

‘Where is this park, and when did you first see her?’ Deacon asked.

‘Near my house. Two weeks ago. About one A.M.’

Scarlett lifted her brows in surprise. ‘You go to the park at one in the morning?’

‘Not normally. Normally I go mid-afternoon, but it’s been so hot lately that I’ve been going after dark, around eleven.’

‘You’re a runner?’ Deacon asked him.

‘I was. Haven’t done any running in the last nine months.’

Not since he’d nearly been killed, Scarlett thought, the events of that day seared into her memory. A bullet had pierced his lung as he’d protected an innocent young woman who’d been targeted by a sociopath. They’d nearly lost Marcus that day.

Marcus returned his attention to the crime scene. ‘I have an older dog with a heavy coat,’ he went on quietly. ‘She has a bad heart and doesn’t do well in the heat, so I walk her after dark. Two weeks ago I got tied up on a project at work and it was after one when I got home, but BB needed to be walked, so we went to the park. It was deserted, so I . . .’ He hesitated, shrugged uncomfortably. ‘I was sitting on a bench letting her sniff the grass when Tala came down the path with a standard poodle, all groomed in that frou-frou show-dog style. The dog’s collar caught my eye before Tala did.’

‘The dog had a reflective collar?’ Deacon asked.

Scarlett was stuck back on ‘It was deserted’. It was deserted, so you what? she wanted to ask. Because he was blushing again, just like he had when he admitted he’d promised his mother he’d wear Kevlar. She tabled the question for later.

Marcus shook his head. ‘No. The collar was diamond-studded.’

Both Scarlett and Deacon blinked. ‘Diamonds?’ she repeated. ‘Are you sure they weren’t rhinestones? Or CZ?’

‘Pretty sure. The collar had a brand tag sewn in to it – one of the exclusive jewelers in Chicago.’ He gave them the name. ‘When I called the store to inquire, the jeweler told me they haven’t sold that model in a while. He suggested that I check eBay.’

Scarlett frowned. ‘Why am I not surprised that you already called?’

Marcus shrugged. ‘I was hoping to identify her later. At first, I was just appalled. I mean, who’d put that kind of collar on a dog? And what was a girl her age doing walking the dog at one A.M.? Alarm bells started ringing in my head, so I stood up and started to walk in the opposite direction, but . . .’ He sighed. ‘She was crying.’

‘So you stayed?’ Deacon asked carefully.

Marcus leveled him a sharp glare. ‘Only long enough to ask her why she was crying and if she needed help. She just turned and ran away. I started to follow her, but BB can’t run anymore. By the time I picked up the dog, the girl was gone.’

‘When did you see her again?’ Scarlett asked, her mind suddenly filled with the image of him cradling an old dog in his arms.

‘The next night, but not as close up. I went back at one in the morning, sat on the bench and waited, but she stayed back so far that I didn’t see her. But I did see her dog. She wore black, but the poodle is white, so he showed up through the trees. I called out to her, but she ran again. Then the third night, she came close enough that I could see she was crying again.’

Scarlett studied Marcus’s face. He was holding something back. ‘What made her come close the third night?’

He hesitated, then rolled his eyes. ‘I’m not sure. Maybe because I was singing.’

Again she and Deacon blinked. ‘You were singing?’ she echoed. ‘As in . . . a song?’

He scowled at her. ‘Yes, as in a song. I was all alone the first night. Or thought I was. I sometimes sing when I’m alone. I thought if I sang again she might come closer.’

Fascinating. His blush had deepened, his shoulders hunching defensively. He thought she was going to laugh at him. Nothing could be further from the truth. She was drawn by his voice too. When he spoke, she heard music. The saddest music she’d ever heard, she’d thought the very first time she’d heard him speak. That he used that voice to make actual music was no surprise.

‘I sing when I’m alone too,’ she said quietly. ‘Mostly because nobody wants to hear me. I take it that Tala wanted to hear you.’

The stiffness in his shoulders melted a bit. ‘Yeah. I guess she did.’

‘What were you singing?’ Deacon asked.

His jaw tightened. ‘Vince Gill. “Go Rest High On That Mountain”.’

Scarlett sucked in a breath, the ache in her chest sudden and sharp. She’d heard that song too many times, at too many funerals. The first funeral at which she’d heard it still haunted her nightmares.

That the most recent one still haunted Marcus was evident from the pain on his face.

‘I understand,’ she whispered. He met her eyes, and she could see that he believed her.

Deacon was looking at them, confused. ‘I don’t. What is that song?’

‘It’s a country song,’ Scarlett said, holding Marcus’s gaze. ‘Vince Gill wrote it for his brother, after his brother’s death. It’s often played at funerals. It was played at Marcus’s brother’s funeral.’ Her throat grew thick and she swallowed hard. ‘It was a good choice.’

Marcus’s eyes flickered, gratitude mixing with the pain.

Deacon let out a quiet breath. Critically wounded while taking down Marcus’s brother’s killer, he hadn’t attended the seventeen-year-old’s funeral, but he had seen the boy’s dead body in its shallow grave. As had Scarlett.

As had Marcus. Scarlett wished she could have kept him from having that picture in his mind. He was clearly still grieving. Seeing his brother’s body tossed into a grave like so much trash would make healing that much harder. This Scarlett knew from experience.

‘I see,’ Deacon said quietly. ‘So Tala was drawn by the song that night. Did she speak to you then?’