Marisol Delko Caine's face stared down at me.

The statue was exquisite, the detailing so complete as to almost appear alive. The damn thing seemed to breathe, and for a moment I thought I as staring at a ghost come to life. She stood resplendent, live-sized on a three-step marble stair. The entire statute was made of pure, veinless white marble, polished so it glittered in the fading afternoon sunlight. Garbed in white robes, with two perfect wings extended behind her, she held an expression of serene repose.

She held, at least to my eyes, the expression of true forgiveness.

I don't know how long I stood there gawking at the thing. My brain was trying to move past the absolute perfection of its craftsmanship and decide if this was the most loving memorial I had ever seen… or the most horrifying. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't offended by the sight of Marisol as an angel. Catholic school for most of my childhood had drilled all kinds of notions about angels and saints into my head. It was the fact that she was perfect. Too perfect. Marisol had been as human as I. That meant she had had flaws, both of the physical and mental variety.

I wasn't sure if I was staring at an idealized memory of his dead wife, or his vision of what a perfect woman truly was. That was the creepy part.

And yet, as I stood there gaping, the sun started to set. Cool evening light began to dim to shades of scarlet… washing over the white statue like crimson shadows of blood. I gasped. I couldn't help it. Was he denied even this, I wondered? Here, in his perfect garden with his perfect statues—things that would exist long after he and I were dust in our graves—he was still denied comfort. Always the blood on his hands would taint everything he touched. Even his statute of Marisol.

I was running before I knew what I was doing, heading into the mini-cathedral like hell, itself, was at my heels. I had to get away from the image of the blood-soaked angel. Somehow knowing it was just the shadows of sunset couldn't take the fear from my heart. I didn't want to see anymore. I didn't want these foreshadowings, these glimpses, into his heart.

I wanted to go home and forget that I ever came here. Not to sound overly dramatic, Megan, but are you certain you want to know? This conversation could break you. He had said those words to me at the beginning of this whole ordeal. He had been trying to warn me even then. I had been too foolish, too arrogant, to see those words for what they truly were.

The double doors closed behind me with an echoing boom, and I sagged against them gasping in air by the lungful. The desire to cry, to give way to giant wracking sobs, was almost too much to resist. Before this day began, I had been so certain that Horatio deserved everything that was coming at him. It had been his decision to walk this path, and it would be his fate to reap the consequences. Looking back on that now… I wasn't sure anymore. Even murderers deserved some respite from their crimes, even if it was only in their minds.

"You get used to it, you know; the attacks of conscience and the pains of the heart."

I spun around, slightly ashamed of the really girlish yelp that left my lips, partly surprised at the person who was speaking to me. Of all the people I had thought to encounter, I should have known that she would be here. And yet, she was one of the last people on my list. Some part of me had held out higher hopes for her, for the woman that at one time had been my friend.

Yelina Salas spared a soft and almost empathetic smile for me before turning back to her task. A hundred or more daisies were in her hands and strewn at her feet. Delicately, she plucked one stem from her hand, weaving it into the floral archway before her. Her hair was longer than I remembered, floating around her waist in soft brown waves. Her face held a few more lines than when last we spoke, making her look older and yet somehow more beautiful at the same time.

I stepped into the cathedral, the ridiculous clicking of my heeled sandals echoing loudly in the reverent silence. Candles lit the entire place, the scent of beeswax buried only slightly under the scent of lavender incense and flowers. There were two rows of five pews arranged before the altar, the stained glass windows rising high above me, spilling colored light across the worship section of the room. Everything was polished and shined, from the expensive mahogany pews to the gray marble floors.

It would have been breath-takingly beautiful, had I not been so afraid.

Yelina stood off to the right, and I saw that she was working over a beautiful bronze sarcophagus. The man pictured in exact relief—almost as exact and realistic as the statue of Marisol—was none other than Raymond Caine. Horatio's dead brother and Yelina's ex-husband. Other rows of copper pedestals lined that side of the wall, all empty of the crypts they were meant to hold.

"Daisies were his favorite flower," she said absently, and I wasn't sure if it was to herself or addressed to me. "In the beginning, he would bring me bouquets of them by the bucketful. Said that they were the only flowers that captured the sunshine and the summer breeze. Even at night, they would symbolize hope and love and the simple pleasures of life. But that was before..."

"Raymond," I said aloud, slowly crossing over to her.

Yelina nodded once, holding out a few stems of the flowers to me. "Before the meth took him from me, before the faked deaths and the unexplained secrets, we were truly happy. He would wake me every morning with a daisy, just caressing it up and down my face until I woke giggling at him like a schoolgirl."

Her voice sounded so wistful that I felt my throat choking up with tears. I had to clear it a few times. "We all miss him, Yelina."

She accepted the blossom that I held out to her, though her mouth turned down in a frown. "Not everyone," she sighed. "After Raymond truly died, after the three of us—Horatio, myself and my son—returned from Brazil to bury him properly, I learned just how little people missed him."

I winced inwardly at that one. "I'm sorry. I know I should have been there more for you—"

She waved away my words, plucking yet another flower from my hand. "You did what you thought was best, Megan. I don't fault you. You were dealing with the loss of your own husband. I didn't expect you to be at my beck and call. Not like the others."

What could I say to that? Nothing, I realized. No amount of words could erase the pain of loosing a husband. And no amount of words could take back that feeling of betrayal when almost everyone you counted on turned their back on you.

"Not Horatio," I found myself saying, my brain coming out of emotional lockdown enough to start being a cop again. More pieces were falling into place in this puzzle. Somehow I knew I had to collect them all before I could escape. "He never betrayed you."

"No," she answered. "He never did. He took care of us, just like he said he would. Do you know that Ray, Jr., graduates this year?" She flashed a smile at me, a bit of the old Yelina shining through the soft shroud of her grief. "He has been accepted into the Harvard Medical program. He's going to be a doctor. He is going to save lives, not bury them."

"Horatio is funding this, isn't he? Surely you have to know that your son isn't going—"

She cut me off with a look sharp enough to etch glass. "What I know is that Horatio has provided for us when we had nothing. He has promised me that Ray will not be part of anything he doesn't want to be part of. He made the same promise to Madison and Susie."

I blinked. "Madison and Susie are here?"

Now that was an unexpected twist, the thought that both Suzie and Yelina could live under the same roof and not kill each other. What kind of magic did Horatio possess that would make Yelina forgive the woman that had slept with her own husband, and worse, bore him a daughter?

"Of course," Yelina answered, as if we weren't discussing her husband's former mistress, and instead speaking about a beloved cousin. "We are a family, Megan. We have our own houses, of course, and our own lives. But we live as a family here on the estate."

It felt like a huge chuck of ice was forming in the pit of my stomach as I remembered the layout of this estate. There were six distinct mansions in the back of the property, mansions I had assumed belonged to Horatio's Mala Noche troops. I now knew different.

"Who lives in the other four houses?" I asked, terrified to know and yet needing the answer.

Yelina gave me a knowing smile, one that almost caused me to back up a step. "No one right now. Those are held in reserve."

"For who?" I prompted.

She turned back to the floral arch over Raymond's memorial tomb, adding more flowers. "Calleigh, Eric, Natalia, Ryan and Alex."

My flowers fell to the floor.