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as if nothing had happened. 

CHAPTER THREE
     
     
    The sound of a car horn split the air and Lanie let out a shriek, jumping in her chair.  Jerked out of her morbid thoughts, she whipped her gaze toward the piercing noise, feeling more annoyed than frightened, and finding Brady’s black Honda pulling up into the driveway, with Brady waving to her out his window.
    Trying to force her heart out of her throat and back down into her chest, Lanie got out of her chair, put her bag over her shoulder, and headed off the porch.  Once she was belted into her seat and they were on their way to the game field, Brady turned his kind blue eyes to Lanie, smiling at her.
    “I didn’t think you’d feel like coming to watch practice today,” he said to her.
    “I wasn’t going to,” she answered with a shrug, noting that Brady seemed to have slapped on a bit more cologne than was necessary.  It was actually starting to choke her.  Probably he had dabbed it on for Devyn, the poor girl.
    “Well, I’m glad you decided to come,” he told her.  “You shouldn’t be sitting at home all depressed.  It…it won’t change anything.”
    Lanie nodded, but didn’t feel the surge of annoyance that she had when her aunt had said the same thing.  It was just…different coming from Brady.
    “Are you okay?” he asked her, shooting her a quick glance that was filled with worry.  “I mean really ?”
    “I’m okay,” she answered honestly.  “You shouldn’t worry about me.  You should be worrying about Stacy’s family.”
    Brady lifted a broad shoulder.  “I am worried about them, but I don’t really know them.  I didn’t really know Stacy.  But, I do know you.  We’re all worried about you because…well, you know.”
    Lanie looked at the boy, whose blonde hair was falling about his face in a disarray of sandy curls, feeling confused.  “Know what?  What do you mean?”
    “I mean…well, your mom…you know, and then your grandma…and now your friend.  It just seems like you’ve lost a lot of people and…we’re all just worried about you,” Brady told her, looking highly uncomfortable.
    Lanie considered his words for a moment.  He was right.  She’d lost her mother and her grandmother both in the past three years.  But, as horrible as it had been to lose half her family in such a short time, it was part of living.  Bodies were fallible.  Bodies grew old and bodies failed for no reason.  She’d come to terms with those losses. 
    “I’m okay.  Really,” Lanie assured Brady.  “You don’t have to worry about me.”
    “Eh, that’s what friends are for, right?” Brady said to her.
    “Right,” she agreed easily, smiling.
    “So, let us do our job.  I know you’d do the same thing for one of us,” Brady avowed.
    Lanie felt a sudden and unexpected stab of guilt pierce her.  She’d been annoyed with Aunt Gretchen for doing her job, which was worrying about her niece, who’d lost two people already and had now lost a third in the most hideous way possible. 
    She was an ungrateful snipe.
    There was a space of silence in the car as Brady navigated the streets through town and toward Fells Pointe High, but Lanie didn’t mind.  Silences with Brady Cooper weren’t awkward at all, but were instead just…comfortable.  Maybe because Brady was just…comfortable.
    “Lanie?” Brady suddenly spoke, turning a quick glance to her.
    “Yeah?” she said, not quite liking the look in his eyes.
    “Do you think someone in town killed…her?” came the question.
    Lanie pulled in a breath.  “There’s a big probability that it wasn’t a total stranger who killed her,” she stated.
    “It doesn’t even make sense,” Brady stated, shaking his head.  “Who…who would do something like that?  Someone that we know …it just doesn’t make any sense.”
    Lanie agreed.  It didn’t make any sense.  A seventeen year old girl had her throat slashed and it was in all likelihood a friend or an