She messed with her bangs for a moment, smoothing them down. “The problem is, we have no idea who Amanda was hiding the information from, Fletch. If she wasn’t willing to risk coming in through her own service, or letting the people she was working with know where she was, that tells a lot about her situation. She clearly knew what was on the SD card. Why didn’t she go to Girabaldi? Why did she sneak into the country, and how? And she went to a med student in Georgetown instead of her handlers? That’s all kinds of messed up. We need to trace her last steps, find out when she came in and from where, in addition to figuring out why she was avoiding her own people. I don’t see how we can do that without talking to someone who genuinely has her best interest at heart. Who might know what she was thinking.”

“Like a sister.”

“Exactly. I don’t have one, but if I did, and I was in trouble, family is the first place I’d go. Who knows what sort of situation she had? They could be close, they could hate each other. But if they are close, the sister might be the key. She may have heard or seen something that she doesn’t even realize is important. We have to find her. That data—if it’s even remotely accurate—could be worth killing for. If Amanda shared, Robin is in danger, too.”

“I agree. We’re here.” Fletcher made a right and pulled to the curb in front of Souleyret’s place.

The tall shotgun house was quiet, undisturbed, situated on a street that was also quiet, undisturbed. Real estate agents would call it charming. The whole neighborhood was a small oasis, one of those tiny pockets of homeyness in the middle of the urban sprawl. D.C. was changing all around him. Places that used to be dangerous at all hours were suddenly filled with sidewalks and driveways and grass and flowers and baby strollers. It was disconcerting. He liked it, but didn’t quite know what to make of it. He didn’t trust anything that looked so good on the outside it made people yearn for it.

He imagined them all sick, dead and dying, the strollers rusting in the driveways, the flowers decaying in their pots. He couldn’t let that happen.

He unbuckled his safety belt and climbed from the car. Sam followed him onto the small front porch, stood by his side as he slammed his fist into the door three times.

Nothing.

He rang the bell, and the dog next door, who apparently didn’t mind knocking but hated the chimes of the tinny bell, went mad.

Still, nothing from the house.

He tried the knob, found it unlocked, and his heart gave a little thump. This might be a nice area of town, but no one in their right mind left their doors unlocked. It was still D.C., after all.

“Exigent circumstances,” he said to Sam. “Back me up?” She nodded, eyes roving the neighborhood as if the answers were printed in the landscaping.

He called it in, told Hart they were entering the premises. Hart promised to have three patrols there momentarily. But Fletcher didn’t want to wait. Something was pulling him into the house. His years of experience told him something wicked waited inside.

He stepped into the cool foyer, called out, “Hello? Mr. Oread? Mr. Lanter? Metro Police.”

Nothing except the cool hiss of the air conditioner, which had been left on high. The whole place felt like the inside of a refrigerator. The floors were polished oak, the foyer empty of furniture aside from a small wooden bench, the walls painted a generic, builder-grade tan. A pair of muddy Wellies and dirt-covered work gloves stood in the corner—one of the renters had been gardening.

Fletcher cleared the rooms of the bottom floor out of habit; there was no one here, no one hiding, about to jump out. There was a table in the corner of the living room that had been disturbed. Searched, he thought, pointing toward it with his gun for Sam to see.

It was too quiet. Bad things awaited them above. He couldn’t smell them, but he knew there was death here.

He saw Sam staring up the stairs. She’d sensed it, too.

He raised his weapon again and started up. Sam followed in his steps, careful and competent, hands in her pockets so she didn’t accidentally touch anything. He appreciated not having to warn her to watch where she was going.

“Fletch,” Sam said, low. He turned and saw where she was pointing. A long blond hair, tag attached, drifted from the banister. “We’ll need to collect it. Amanda might have been here.”

“Or we could have a suspect. You feel it, too, huh? It’s all wrong in here.”

“Definitely,” she said. “Come on, let’s see what’s up there.”

When they found the renters, facing each other, one tied up, the other reaching out, such a strange, dislocated scene, Fletcher started to curse. Sam could already hear the sirens approaching; their backup’s arrival was imminent.

“How long have they been dead?” he demanded.

Sam touched the boy closest to the door on the arm. “You know I can’t tell you that without a liver temp. And with the air-conditioning set this high, it might retard the decomposition process. A day, maybe. It wasn’t recent, they’re out of rigor, but they haven’t begun to leak. The air-conditioning has helped preserve them a bit. I’d say within the past twenty-four hours.”

“Goddamn it all. We’ve been fucking around with the damn SD card while these kids rotted.”

She gently moved the boy’s arm. “Fletcher, I can’t tell you exactly, but they’ve been dead longer than you’ve been on the case. It wouldn’t have made a difference. You couldn’t have saved them.”

But she understood his frustration.

She saw a small piece of paper under the unbound boy. Carefully eased it out. “Fletch. We have another note. Listen to this. ‘I’m sorry, I had no choice. It’s better this way.’ Do you think it’s a coincidence? Could we have another murder-suicide?”

“I guaran-goddamn-tee you this isn’t a coincidence.”

There were voices outside. The police were here. Neighbors started to gather; Sam heard questions being shouted.

She ignored them, looked closer at the bodies, the positioning, the dried white strings of saliva around their mouths. Carefully eased a mouth open. Saw a brilliant red; the mucosa lining was irritated. “They ingested something. Something that worked fast. There are no signs of regurgitation, just froth. Whatever it was killed them very quickly.”

“Any ideas?”

“Not until I get them on the table—or Amado does, I mean. OCME has the in-house tox screen. I’d advise you have a death investigator take a blood sample and hightail it through the system, so we can see what we might be dealing with. And we should check glasses, cups, anything that’s been left out.”

“We’ll do that. I’m going to go let them in and get a crime scene unit here.” He stopped in the door, looked back at her. “Who the hell are we dealing with?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know, Fletch. But we’re going to figure this out.”

Hopefully, before too many more people die.

* * *

There was a big problem with being a professor, and not a medical examiner. Sam had to leave the room and let the D.C. people come in and do their work, without guidance or instruction from her. She could have pulled rank, thrown her FBI badge around, taken control, but honestly, she needed to keep herself separate and allow the investigation to continue.

She’d asked the death investigators to look carefully for injection sites, just in case her first instinct, that they drank some sort of poison, was incorrect. She had to assume whatever killed them had been administered against their wills, whether injected or ingested. She texted Nocek and asked him to rush the tox screen. But then she’d stepped away to let them do their jobs. There was nothing else she could do here.

Her fingers itched for a scalpel, to peel back the skin and see what sort of havoc the poison had wreaked. She checked her watch instead, counting silently. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three.