The sea crashed on the rocks, and the tide tried to drag her back under but she resisted its pull. She forced open one eye, the lid weighted like a manhole cover.
To keep it open, she focused her dry eyeball on the filmy white curtain billowing into the room from the French door ajar to the balcony. Another wave from the ocean below made its presence heard as it broke and then clawed at the rocky shore. She could almost taste the salt from the sea spray on her tongue.
She licked her lips. The air in the room lay heavy upon her, and she still hadn’t managed to open her other eye. She lifted a lethargic arm and rubbed her closed eye, hoping to stimulate it.
She blinked against the stinging sensation and rubbed again, smearing moisture across her cheek to her ear. Had she been crying in her sleep? That deep, dark slumber she couldn’t seem to shake?
Raising her hand in front of her face, she wrinkled her nose. Not tears, blood. She hadn’t had a bloody nose since she was a kid. She pinched the bridge of her nose with two fingers, sniffing, and her nostrils flared at the tinny smell that seemed to invade every pore.
The odor revived her, stunning her like a prod. She jerked her bare limbs beneath the silk sheets. She bolted to a sitting position, the back of her head hitting the headboard. Pain, all out of proportion to the tap of her skull against the wood, coursed through her body, and she gagged.
As if that bump had awakened every nerve ending in her body, her right hand began to throb. She spread out her fingers, the red cuts on her hand standing in stark relief against the white sheets.
What the hell happened? Why was she bleeding, and why was she naked in her ex-husband’s bedroom?
She scrambled from the bed, tripping over something soft on the floor in the semidarkness. Gasping, she fumbled for the light switch on the wall next to the bed and jabbed at it with her thumb.
Her gaze dropped to the floor, and she staggered back, her mouth agape. A scream gathered in her lungs but lodged in her chest, choking her instead. Closing her eyes, she drew in a deep breath. Somewhere deep down inside, she knew vomiting would only make this situation, whatever it was, much, much worse.
Her self-preservation, one of her strongest instincts, took control of her brain and her eyelids flew open. She extended her leg and with her big toe, she prodded the shoulder of her ex-husband, crumpled on the floor.
Her investigatory digit met cold flesh, and the reality rushed in on her, just as surely as those waves were rushing to shore outside that window. She clapped a hand over her mouth and hissed through her fingers, “Niles?”
The s hung in the air and only the drapes floating into the room whispered a response.
She fell to her knees and crawled toward Niles’s still form. Covering two fingers with the bedspread that hung to the floor, she placed them against his neck. The once-vibrant man, who couldn’t seem to sit still for a second, didn’t have one ounce of life left in his body.
She sat back on her heels and surveyed the opulent bedroom she’d painstakingly decorated a lifetime ago. What had happened in this room?
She dug a knuckle into her temple. She couldn’t remember coming into the bedroom with Niles last night. She’d come back to the house with him in his car after the drink they’d shared at the Marina Sports Bar. He had the file she’d wanted to see in his home office.
He did so much work from home she didn’t figure it for a ploy. Niles didn’t need ploys. He’d moved on to another woman shortly after their separation. Hell, who was she kidding? He’d moved on to multiple women before the separation.
Then what? Had he drugged her? She ran her tongue around her dry mouth. Had he not wanted to show her the file?
She peered at her hands and the cuts on her right palm. Her gaze darted to the bloody wounds gouging Niles’s back. He’d been stabbed...to death.
They’d fought last night. They always fought. That was why they’d got divorced. Civilized people divorced. They didn’t kill. She hated Niles, but she never wished him dead.
The breeze filtering in from the open door tickled her ear. She shook her head. Not just dead. Murdered. And she’d blacked out...again.
Adrenaline coursed through her veins, and she sprang to her feet. Her head swiveled back and forth, her gaze tripping over her clothes in the corner. Why had she taken them off? She dragged in a deep breath. If she panicked now, she’d get herself into even deeper trouble.
Get dressed. Get out.
As she tiptoed to the jumble of clothing, a building dread accompanied each step. There could be only one reason for her to strip off her clothes: if they were soaked with blood. She leaned forward, pinching the material of her blouse between two fingers and pulling it free from the pile.
The spotless white silk had her releasing a noisy breath. She grabbed a handful of the black slacks and shook them out—dry as a bone. As dry as her mouth.
Her underwear had been dislodged from her slacks and fell back to the floor. She scooped up her bra and panties and put them on over her cold, clammy flesh. Had she showered at some point last night?
She pressed her nose against the skin of her upper arm—not sweaty, but not exactly fresh, either. She crept into the bathroom and nudged the light switch with the side of her hand, casting a warm glow over the gray tiles with their bright blue accents.
No droplets of water appeared on the floor of the walk-in shower. No damp towels littered the bathroom or hung on the racks. She edged up to the vanity and peered at her reflection in the mirror.
A pair of wide violet eyes stared back at her, and a smear of blood created a line from the corner of her eye to her ear. That was her own blood from the cuts on her right hand. She didn’t have a speck of Niles’s blood on her. She stuck two fingers in her mouth and then rubbed the red streak from her face.
If her clothes weren’t bloody and she hadn’t taken a shower, surely she’d be covered in his blood if...? But she’d blacked out.
She spun away from the mirror and scanned every corner of the bathroom. Nothing looked out of place—except her standing here in her underwear.
She whipped a hand towel from the rack and wiped the light switch, and the sink and shower faucets for good measure. Then she rushed back into the bedroom and erased her fingerprints from the light switch in there, too. She didn’t have to wipe down the entire house, as she’d been here recently. Hell, she used to live here.
She inspected the bed, squinting at the pillow and sheets, searching for strands of her dark hair and blood from her cuts. Those would be damning, but she couldn’t afford to spread even more of her DNA around by going into the laundry room and washing the bedding.
Then she crouched beside Niles’s dead body and studied the cuts on his back and the ripped, slightly freckled flesh. She shivered.
She