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lead to a dozen theories—I have an immense amount of respect for those who question everything they hear or see. It’s the arrogance of the conspiracy theories that bothers me.
    “Maybe Kiona and Victoria had some kind of issue with each other,” John says, his fingers splayed over the top of his piano fallboard. “Kiona killed her, and now she’s decided to kill my other students because she knew I was Victoria’s mentor.”
    “If you stretched any further, you could grab onto the aliens that are part of your next theory,” I drawl.
    “It could happen,” he insists. “She could have killed Victoria in a moment of rage and it caused her to become unhinged.”
    “And what about this latest death?” I challenge. “You said she wasn’t one of your students.”
    “I don’t know,” he says. “I had Eliza Brandt for an introductory class, but she didn’t talk much. I barely knew her. But, clearly, the girl was shot, so this murder was meant to be different from the others. It’s like she wanted people to know she was willing to use the gun she took from her parent’s house.”
    “You think that’s why she chose to use a gun now, instead of the poison she had been using before?”
    “It could also be because she killed Alex, her poison expert,” he says. “She’s using a gun because she couldn’t make the poison.”
    “Okay, still, that’s a drastic change,” I say. “The poison was so subtle, the police thought it wasn’t murder until the third death. If she was part of the plans, she didn’t want to create a lot of attention around the deaths. Now she’s shooting people? It doesn’t make sense.”
    “Like I said, maybe she wanted to scare people. Maybe she decided she didn’t care anymore about being subtle.”
    “I’m hearing a lot of maybes right now,” I say. “We need to find her. I don’t care about the motive. She’s killed two people with a gun now—which creates a whole new question. Why would she use my gun to kill Alex, but then disappear with her own gun? She could have just disappeared with my gun. She could have not disappeared at all—nobody was investigating her.”
    “She could have gotten skittish.”
    I rub my temple. “That’s still just a theory without any evidence to back it up.”
    There’s a knock on John’s door. He walks over to his window and looks out.
    “It’s just the mailman,” he says.
    “I’m surprised the police haven’t come by yet,” I say.
    “They did,” he says. “When you went to your lab.”
    “You’re just telling me this now?”
    “You have enough to worry about,” he says. “I handled it. I acted shocked that you could be involved in a crime and I swore that you hadn’t been here. I even had a cup of coffee with Stolz. She was a bit suspicious when she first came around, but she seemed relaxed by the time she left.”
    “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this.”
    “It’s when I wasn’t sure if I trusted you, okay?” he says. “I still wanted that option to go to the police.”
    I shake my head. “You can create entire conspiracy theories, but you can’t trust me.”
    “You didn’t trust me when these murders first started either.”
    “You were the one connection between them all!” I snap.
    “I’m going to get the mail.” He walks away.
    I go to the window and watch him retrieve the mail. As he’s taking it out of his mailbox, I see a man with pale blond hair wearing a black jacket and jeans and standing across the street, reading a map.
    Who reads a map anymore?
    When John walks back into the house, I grab his arm and drag him to the window.
    “What the hell—”
    “That could be an officer,” I hiss, indicating to the man. “Maybe you weren’t as convincing as you thought.”
    “Well, do you recognize him?” he asks.
    “No, but they could have brought someone in from a different area, so I wouldn’t be able to recognize them,” I say. “The police aren’t stupid when they’re