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technicality.” With a sigh, the hotel owner shook his head.
    “Damnedest thing you ever heard of.”
    Even if Jasmine found whoever had sent her sister’s bracelet, she’d face other challenges. If the prosecutors didn’t build a solid case, if they made a single misstep, Kimberly’s kidnapper could walk, just as Adele’s had. It was one of those harsh realities that often burned out the sympathetic souls who gravitated to her line of work. “What sort of technicality?”
    “The detective in charge messed up the way he gathered the evidence or something.”
    “How?”
    “I forget. The case went to trial. Seemed like a slam dunk. Then everything went to hell.”
    Sometimes it all seemed so futile, and stories like this one, where a case should’ve come together but didn’t, made it worse. “If he didn’t go to prison, where is he?”
    The man’s eyes lit with a sense of justice and the joy of telling of a good story.
    “Romain shot him.”
    Jasmine felt her jaw drop. “You’re kidding. Moreau’s dead?”
    “As dead as a man can get. When he walked out of the courthouse…pow.” Cabanis made a gun with his finger and thumb, pulling the trigger as he imitated the sound.
    It took a moment for the finality of Fornier’s action to sink in, but certain questions soon pushed to the forefront of Jasmine’s brain. “Did Fornier go to prison?”
    His work forgotten, Cabanis rested his elbows on the bar. “Of course. Didn’t even bother to resist. He dropped the gun on the courthouse steps and let them arrest him. I saw it on TV. The networks were there. They got it on tape.”
    “Really. How long was his sentence?”
    “Due to the situation, the judge went easy on him. He got two years and served about—” Cabanis’s whiskers rasped as he rubbed his chin “—eighteen months or so.
    I saw a news piece on his release a couple years back.” Jasmine wondered if her father would’ve shot Kimberly’s kidnapper if he’d had the chance and thought it was a definite possibility. Then she put herself in Fornier’s place.
    Would she ever take the law into her own hands? Demand justice at any cost?
    What kind of person would she be after something like that? She was no advocate of 26

    vigilantism, but if she was sure—as sure as Fornier seemed to be—that she had the man who’d brutally murdered her sister, and that man was about to walk…
    “Fornier’s not your average fellow,” the hotel owner was saying. “Used to be Special Forces.”
    “I wonder if he regretted firing that shot.” She was asking herself more than him, but Cabanis answered.
    “I don’t think so. Prison made him even tougher than he already was. He appealed to the public for help when his daughter was first missing. But he didn’t want anything to do with publicity after he got out. In the clip I saw, he kept turning away from the camera, refusing to comment, until a reporter cornered him as he was getting into a car. Then he looked right into the camera and said, ‘I’d do it again.’” Jasmine rubbed away the goose bumps that rose on her skin. “Do you know how Fornier managed to track down Moreau?”
    “I couldn’t give you the details, no.”
    “Thanks.” She smiled as if Fornier’s story was merely one of those horrific tales that fascinated the casual listener, but there was nothing casual about the impact it’d had on her. She’d once feared her father would follow a similar path; now she felt her own thirst for vengeance.
    Stop me. How far would she go in order to accomplish that?
    27

Chapter 3
    There was a sketch artist listed in the Yellow Pages under Forensic Consultants, but Jasmine wasn’t convinced she could rely on the talents of a woman named Rayne Gulley. She was pretty sure the listing had to be a misprint or maybe a joke—until she called. Then she spoke with Ms. Gulley, who sounded surprisingly capable and experienced.
    “I’ve been drawing for nearly forty years,” she said. “Completed