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made a throwing motion. Of course they were talking football. A second cop laughed, both cops clearly awed by the famous athlete, a man the newspapers had once called the most feared linebacker in the NFL. Dani was aware of his other reputation, that of the unrepentant cad who’d left his bride at the altar. The tabloid fodder had never sounded like the Tommy from high school, but people could change. How much Tommy Gunderson had changed remained to be seen.
    The cops barely noticed her as she approached.
    “Hi, Tommy,” she said, standing a few feet behind him.
    He turned and smiled to see her.
    “You still go by Tommy?”
    She knew he had a lot of nicknames. T.G., Mister T, Teej, T-Bone, Tommy Gun, Gunner. She felt like she might be sick, or perhaps those were just butterflies in her stomach.
    “Hey, Danielle,” he said.
    “Dani,” she corrected him.
    “Dani,” he agreed. “Claire told me I might run into you.”
    “Small world,” she said. For some reason, she didn’t want him to know this was her first day flying solo.
    “I apologize if I smell bad,” he said. “When Liam called, I rushed here without grabbing a shower.”
    “You smell fine,” she said.
    Why were they talking about how he smelled? When had she ever talked to anybody about how they smelled?
    “I have a cold,” Tommy said, sniffing. “You look like you probably smell good.”
    Now what was she supposed to say?
    Dani had been to Tommy’s fitness center only a few times—for a niece’s birthday party and once for an aerobics class. Each time she was glad she hadn’t run into him, because the fact was that she wanted to run into him. Beth had pointed out that that made no sense. Beth had an irritating habit of doing that.
    “How’s your family?” she inquired.
    “My aunt’s still full-time at the library,” he told her. “My dad’s had a bit of a decline.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that.”
    “It’s not Alzheimer’s,” Tommy clarified. “It’s called Lewy body dementia. LBD. Some days he’s got the attention span of a housefly, but not every day. I was really sorry to hear about your mom and dad.”
    “Time heals all wounds,” she said, her usual lame response.
    “Claire told me you used to babysit for Liam,” he said. “He asked me to meet him here. We’re pretty close. Guys talk to each other when they’re working out. He’s a good kid.”
    “Do you think he’d do drugs?” she asked. She recalled a case study she’d read about a high school wrestler who’d raged out of control. “Steroids, maybe?”
    “Absolutely not,” Tommy said. “He’s a straight arrow. Plus, he’d be out of the gym in a heartbeat if I caught him taking anything more than aspirin.”
    “There was a murder last night up on Bull’s Rock Hill,” Dani said. “I don’t have the details.”
    “I know. They found the victim on the rock with some markings on her body, written in blood,” Tommy said. “That’s what the cops just told me five minutes ago.”
    It annoyed her that Tommy already knew more about the crime than she did. She remembered the way his celebrity, even in high school as the Big Man on Campus, had opened doors for him that other people had to work hard to open. It wasn’t that he had a big head about it. He still seemed self-effacing and ego-less. After their big moment on the dance floor, or whatever it was, she’d been worried that he might call her, and then she’d have to explain her behavior, to herself if not to him. She’d been standoffish when she passed him in the hall and even a bit rude. She focused on her goals, to go to college and then medical school, and nothing was going to distract her from that. And Tommy was nothing if not distracting.
    “It’s good to see you,” she began, when she was interrupted by the uniformed officer monitoring the door to the parking garage, calling out, “Look busy, people!”
    Irene Scotto strode through the door the way a bull enters a bullring, alert and