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fired one shot.”
    “So?”
    “There were at least three shots fired.”
    “That’s what I heard.” Eric frowned. “You’re saying someone else shot the kid?”
    “I don’t know.” Angel glanced at him. “You’re thinking that’s not possible, aren’t you? That Billy and I were alone in the building.”
    “What I’m thinking doesn’t matter. You know what went down. If you say somebody else was there, I believe you, but...” Eric hesitated and glanced in the rearview mirror as they approached city hall. The police station was housed in the north half of the building. Since Sunset Cove was a small town, and since they only had fourteen officers in the entire department, they didn’t have a lot of the perks of a big city.
    “But?” Angel folded her arms.
    “Just be sure you have your facts straight, that’s all. You were pretty shook up back there. It’s possible that you blocked it out.It happens. I remember my first time. I was nervous—I can tell you that. This guy came at me with a knife. I had to shoot.” He frowned. “Craziest thing. I thought I only fired once. Turned out I’d cranked six bullets into the guy.”
    Angel had heard similar stories before. She’d been trained to fire in succession at body mass. Had she done that? Apparently, but she remembered having second thoughts. She didn’t tell Eric how she’d hesitated, how she almost hadn’t fired at all. Her weapon, a semiautomatic, had a hair-trigger response. Was Eric right? Had she blocked it out?
    She closed her eyes, trying to remember, but all she could see was the blood pumping out of Billy’s wound and the color seeping out of his face. She stared at her red-streaked hands and blood-soaked pants. Would the stains ever come out?
    “I’m not the only one that’s happened to,” Eric went on. “Talk to anyone who’s had to use deadly force and they’ll tell you the same thing.”
    “I suppose...”
    “Angel.” Eric settled a hand on her shoulder, his blue eyes filled with empathy. “You did the right thing back there. The kid was bad news. All I’m saying is, it doesn’t matter if you fired one shot or three—or if you emptied your gun. You did what you had to do.”
    Angel nodded. “I guess I did.” But his reassurance did nothing to ease her anguish.
    Eric dropped her off at the back entrance of the historical red brick building, promising to check up on her later. Angel headed straight for the women’s locker room, where she stripped off the bloodied uniform and placed it into a plastic bag. Once the crime lab techs finished examining the clothes, they would dispose of them. She’d have to get another uniform. But there would be plenty of time to do that while she was on administrative leave, waiting for the investigation to end.
    She stepped into the steaming shower, letting the hot water pound against her skin and watching the swirls of soap pour into the drain. Her throat clogged with sobs she tried to stop.
    He had a gun. I did what I had to do , Angel reminded herself again. She turned off the shower, dried off, and made her way across the tile floor to her locker. She pulled out her off-duty uniform—a pair of running shoes, jeans, a T-shirt, and a sweatshirt. She dressed quickly, blaming her chills on the coolness of the room.
    Angel decided to write out the report while it was fresh in her mind. She wanted to get it down and get it over with as soon as possible. She took the uniform to the temporary evidence lockers, opened an empty one with her key, stuffed the bag inside, then signed it in along with the locker number. She put a tag on the locker to let other officers know it was in use.
    In the report room, Angel poured herself a cup of coffee, picked up the forms, and settled herself at a table. Thankfully, no one else was around, partly because it was Sunday and partly because all the available officers were at the crime scene.
    She’d only written a few words when her boss, Joe Brady, Sunset