Chapter 1

“Is she dead?”

With her heart hammering against her chest, she lowered her head onto the body of the woman who lay lifeless on the Persian silk rug.

Colleen Caddell listened keenly for a sound, even the faintest of it. She listened for something, anything. But there was nothing. Horror struck her face as, slowly, her gaze averted towards Liz Parker who was standing right above her.

“I can’t hear her heartbeat,” she said, almost in a whisper.

“Are you sure? Step aside, let me listen.”

As Colleen backed away from the body, a fragment of her hair got stuck in the flower sterling silver brooch pinned on the blouse of the woman. She had to tug at her hair to break free and when it finally came undone, she stepped aside for Liz to check her pulse and listen for a heartbeat.

Just as Colleen had said, there was nothing.

“She is dead,” Liz confirmed rather quietly. But that did absolutely nothing to pacify her friend, who was immediately thrown into a frenzy as she stalked around the room.

“Maybe we should call 9-1-1. Yeah, that’s right. We should call an ambulance. I mean you’re a stylist and I am an Architect. And we were both terrible at biology. We are in no position to declare a woman who was perfectly healthy five minutes ago, dead.”

As Colleen was reaching for her phone in her back pocket, Liz's face shot up in surprise. Before she could say, Jack Robinson, she snatched the phone away from her.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Calling 9-1-1. She might be hanging on for dear life now. And the longer we wait, the worse for her.”

“There is nothing worse for her, Colleen,” Liz snapped, tucking the phone away into her back pocket. “Do you see all of that blood soaking that million-dollar rug? Did you hear her heartbeat? Did you feel her pulse? Camilla Lourdes is dead. And there’s nothing either of us can do about it.”

Having said her peace, she moved away from her, walking towards the large mahogany table that stood in between them and the seven-foot floor to ceiling window. The same table Camilla Lourdes had sat at and spelled NO to them, rejecting their application for the umpteenth time.

Barely five minutes ago, they had left this very room feeling all sort of downtrodden when they heard the shattering sound of glass, which turned out to be the jug of juice that was on the desk falling to the floor. And then they heard a loud thud. Which was followed by complete silence.

Alarmed, Colleen and Liz had run back into the room to see if everything was alright. Only to find Camilla sprawled on the floor and bleeding like crazy.

As Liz perused the surroundings like a mother hawk watching her eggs, the hole in the glass flashed in her eyes. Taking a closer look at it, she managed to measure the distance between the hole in the glass from where Camilla had been sitting.

“What are you doing, Liz?” A horrified Colleen whispered as if there was someone outside the room that would hear her if she spoke in her regular voice. “Liz–”

“Someone shot her,” Liz deadpanned, not glancing at her.

“Shot?”

“With a sniper or something that could be used from a far range.”

As if Colleen couldn’t become more horrified. Stuttering, she asked, “Are–are you–you saying she was murdered?”

Liz fought the urge to roll her eyes. She moved away from the glass to look through the mahogany desk.

“So, she didn’t trip and hit her head on the desk? A bullet in her brain is the cause of all that blood on the rug?” Her eyes darted towards a now pale Camilla whose wide-opened eyes haunted her.

"Oh my goodness!” she silently cried out. “We’ve gotta get out of here, Liz. This is a crime scene.”

Without waiting for her friend whom she presumed would follow behind, she turned on her heels. The sight of everything in this room, especially the lifeless body, was beginning to give her the creeps.

“Wait, Colleen!"

That was all she needed to stop her from swinging that door open and running out of this house, out of this estate, and if possible, out of this goddamn city.

Liz’s calmness was beginning to make her annoyed. “Look,” she turned abruptly, stomping back inside the room with her pointy finger jabbed at her friend. “If you want to stay here and wait for the cops to come to find you, that’s fine. I love you, Liz, but I am not going to become the number one suspect for murder. Because that is what we are right now. So, either you come with me now or I am leaving here without you.”

For the first time in over two minutes, Liz met Colleen’s horrified gaze. “Come see this,” she said softly.

Colleen crossed the room to stand beside Liz. What they gawked at was the very thing they believed would change their lives. Camilla was sending an acceptance email to the five participants she had chosen for the biennial Detroit Entrepreneurship Summer Camp.

What Colleen failed to notice was that the mail had not been sent. The email addresses of the five participants were staring at them and all that needed to be done was to include their addresses, delete two, and hit send.

Easy peasy!

“What? Hell no!” Colleen refused, stiff-necked, almost running away from the table. “That’s fraud, Liz. What if we’re found out?”

“We won’t be. Except if you decide to make a public announcement about it, nobody will know. We’re the only ones here, we’re the only ones that would know.”

“This is not—”

“Come on, Colleen. Are you not tired?” Liz drawled, bringing pacing Colleen to a halt. “In the last two years, I have gone through shit. You, worse of all. You have and are going through hell. In four weeks or less, you’ll be kicked out of your apartment. You won’t come stay with me because you feel like you’re burdening me enough already. You can’t go back to your maddening family because they hate you. And all your hopes of getting a job prove abortive and almost impossible with each passing day. God, Colleen! You must be fed up. I am! Detroit Entrepreneurship Summer Camp (DESC) will change our lives and you know that. Annabelle is testimony to this. She is so high and mighty right now that she won’t even answer our texts, talk less of seeing us. We can get that, Colleen. For once in your life, snap out of that zone of pessimism and open your eyes to the opportunity in front of us. All your dreams, the ones we made when we were children, adults, and the ones we still deem impossible, can come to pass. You can prove your family wrong. Make them see that you are nothing like what they have made you feel all your life. Please.”

Liz was practically begging, ignoring the sting in her eyes and the knot that formed in her throat. Both of them have been victims of a raging economic run-down two years back and have since not been able to pick themselves up.

The long speech Liz said in one breath hit home. Colleen felt the recurring shadow of depression and hopelessness behind her, once again, waiting to consume her. At the same time, she felt very uneasy about doing this.

“But—"

“There are no buts. We have got to send the mail right now. If we begin to argue about this, we’ll see the crack of dawn. And the longer we wait, the chance of us getting caught increases. The police are going to hint at a timeline for the death of Camilla. And if the mail is sent even a minute after that, we’ll be found out. So make a decision now, Colleen. I won’t do this if you don’t want it.”

Her head began to spiral and Liz didn’t do anything but pressure her all the more.

“Now, Colleen!”

“Fine!” she snapped, raking her hair like she was going to pull it out of its follicles. “Do it.”

In a split second, Liz removed two email addresses in the already composed mail, inserted their own, and hit send, passing Camilla a look and murmuring an apology.

“Can we get out of here, already?” Colleen asked impatiently, one foot already outside the room.

“Sure.”

Eight minutes was spent in Camilla's study, the crime scene, with neither of them knowing anything about how evidence was going to be collated. After all, they didn’t kill Camilla Lourdes. Someone else did. Someone who had a gun, a big one at that. And neither Colleen nor Liz had even seen a pistol in real life. Liz thought she had it figured out and Colleen followed her best friend, the one and only person she could count on in her life.

We are the only ones that know, she thought as they ran away from the house. As long as I keep my mouth shut, our three weeks at DESC will be worth it.

But Colleen, as always, had this nagging feeling. Something would go wrong.