Unaware that her feet barely touched the floor or how tightly she gripped her calligraphy pen, Kendra Morgan labored over her paper, intent on each stroke. Concentrating even harder than usual, she tried to forget the ache she felt at the loss of her friend, Cloud Nicholson. Today a snippet of conversation she’d overheard between two men at the corner store kept repeating in her head. “The paper didn’t say much, but Harold Upstead claims he heard on his police scanner that the detectives had never seen such an unsettling crime scene,” the first man said as he scanned his groceries. “Yeah, basically all I’ve read in the Morning Sun or heard on television was that she’d been viciously attacked and murdered. I wonder if she suffered a lot before she died?” the other man drawled as if he were discussing something as mundane as the day’s weather forecast. “Boy, you’re a gruesome one! I don’t even want to know stuff like that! Let me know if Harold hears anything else though, will ya? I sure hope the cops get some leads. It’s a damned shame, that poor girl.” The man grabbed his groceries and hurried out the door. Wherever Kendra went ─ the store, the school, the library ─ it didn’t matter ─ the talk centered on Cloud’s disappearance. She had vanished while on the way home from her cousin’s birthday party. A few days later, her brutalized body had been discovered. Now Kendra sighed and pushed the memory of the conversation from her mind. Instead, she focused on the last few minutes of her calligraphy project at the community center.
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