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would question his presence outside its doors.
    “No,” Thomas told the young messenger. “He’s not a friend. I’m just in shock. What a terrible thing.”
    “Pretty awful.”
    “Maybe the driver didn’t realize—”
    “Oh, no. It was deliberate. I mean, that’s what it looked like to me. I’m sure there were other witnesses.”
    “I’m so sorry you had to see such a thing.” Thomas tried to give her what he hoped was a reassuring look. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting I must get to.”
    “Right. I’ll get this package upstairs. It’s so weird, to be flying down the street on my bike one minute, thinking this was the most important thing in the world, and then…” She blew out a breath. “Whatever. I have to go. Have a good meeting.”
    She rushed toward the escalators, and Thomas fought back a choking sob.
    Alex is dead. There’s nothing I can do now.
    In Thomas’s place, Alex would protect himself, without question. He would protect Carolyn, protect Nora, protect his adult children from his first marriage. As difficult as he could be, Alex did care about the people he loved.
    As do I.
    Nora and even Carolyn, whom Thomas still cared about despite her betrayal, didn’t need the scandal, questions and scrutiny that his presence at the hotel would spark. The headlines screeching about this morning’s tragedy would be horrendous enough without mention of how the great Ambassador Bruni had been on his way to have breakfast with the longtime friend whose ex-wife was now his widow.
    No, Thomas thought. He wouldn’t put any of them through such an ordeal.
    Best just to melt into the crowd, go back to his office and pretend he knew nothing about why Alex was on his way into the hotel on that particular morning.
    Thomas had lied to the young messenger. He had no meeting he needed to get to. His only meeting was his breakfast with Alexander Bruni, which had just been cruelly canceled.
     
     
     

Chapter Four
     
     
    Melanie Kendall vomited in the ladies’ room of an upscale restaurant several blocks north of the hotel where Alexander Bruni had just been killed in what police were already describing as a suspicious hit-and-run.
    Suspicious, indeed.
    She had resisted the impulse to peek down the street as she’d rushed past on foot, her car—the one that had struck Bruni—safely abandoned in a nearby garage, along with her wig and the black poncho she’d worn. She’d discarded them in a trash can, avoiding any surveillance cameras.
    Everything had been carefully planned, although not by her. She wasn’t a planner. At least not of murders. A beautiful decorating scheme—that she could plan.
    But she could execute a murder with precision and daring, and that, she’d discovered, was a rare skill. Five kills in seven months. Murder investigations in London, San Diego, New York and now Washington, D.C. Her first kill had been declared an accidental death, but that, apparently, was what the client had wanted. Melanie didn’t know the specifics.
    Not my job,
she thought as she gave one last dry heave. She wasn’t repulsed by killing. Vomiting was simply her release after all the excitement.
    No one was in the ladies’ room with her, but Melanie didn’t care. She knew how to puke without making a sound. She flushed the toilet, let the stall door shut behind her and splashed her face with cold water in the spotless shiny black sink, then took a thin, folded towel from a neat pile on the granite counter and patted her skin dry.
    In the mirror, her reflection looked fine. Her eyes were a little bloodshot, but they’d clear up in a few minutes.
    They always did.
    She was small—tiny, really—with long, straight dark hair that she could make elegant or informal with just a quick twist or a flip. Her fiancé, Thomas Asher, the incongruous man of her dreams, had once told her that his first wife had always agonized over her hair.
    His first wife being Carolyn Asher Bruni, now Alex Bruni’s