Because of a Girl by Janice Kay Johnson

detective work. The girlfriend handed the asshole to me as a gift.”
    Troy shrugged. “You’d have gotten his fingerprints out of the car anyway. Not a real smart criminal.”
    â€œHe didn’t intend to touch anything. I watched the surveillance tape. He was damn careful to push the door open with his shoulder going in. Didn’t pick anything up. Pulled his gun right away. If all had gone as planned, he’d have grabbed up his bag of cash and exited the same way. Too bad for him he lost his cool when his girlfriend decided she didn’t want any part of a holdup.”
    Troy’s expression hardened. “Guys like him have shit for impulse control. Or, at least, that’s one excuse for what he did to her.”
    They saw a lot of domestic violence, however peaceful the town of Frenchman Lake appeared on the surface. They didn’t often see anything as sustained and cruel as what the scumbag had done to Robin Buckley. “Heard the victim woke up,” Troy mentioned.
    â€œThank God. The doctors were getting worried. Looks like she’ll be okay. She’s a department secretary at Wakefield, and her husband is a prof. The college president put me on speed dial. I’ll be glad to get him off my back.”
    â€œI know him,” Troy said, a little drily, reminding Jack that Troy had solved a very cold case involving the college, probably earning that same president’s eternal gratitude. And that Troy’s wife, Madison, was the alumni relations director at the college.
    Some yelling was taking place a few desks away. Both men glanced that way to be sure they weren’t needed, then tuned out the racket. Jack sighed.
    â€œI’m getting a bad feeling about the missing girl.” He wished he had enough information to bounce ideas off Troy, but the truth was, so far he’d come up empty. “I’ve tried pinging her phone, and it’s dead.”
    Troy’s eyebrows shot up. “A teenager?”
    That said it all.
    Troy stood looking down at him for another thirty seconds or so, then tapped his desk, said, “Let me know if I can do anything,” and walked out. He was probably heading off to interview adults instead of sixteen-year-olds with their own language and a built-in suspicion of authority.
    How well Jack remembered. Would he have been straight with some cop who’d come to his high school to ask questions? He honestly didn’t know.
    Right now, he went back to his search for the absent Mr. Lee. His identity and location were probably irrelevant—but any competent investigator would want to eliminate him as a player in the girl’s disappearance.
    Â 

CHAPTER FIVE
    T HE FIRST WORDS out of Emily’s mouth when she burst in the door were, “Did you hear anything?”
    Meg quit turning the handle of her Fraser cutter, clamped to the edge of the table. She’d tried to concentrate on some patterns she was working out but found it impossible. At least cutting the wool garments she’d recently bought at garage sales and thrift stores into usable strips was something. It had to be done, and the task was so routine for her, she had been able to work on autopilot. Which left her plenty of time to worry and brood. Sabra’s pregnancy had stirred up too many memories for Meg, and she was finding she’d blanked out a lot of her own pregnancy and the first few years of Emily’s life. Watching the beginnings of a replay was...not pleasant. She supposed she’d been trying to change Sabra’s path, be the person she wished had been in her own life when she’d needed someone.
    It would appear her attempt had been a complete failure. “Nothing,” she said now to Emily’s question, all the tension she felt in her voice. “Not a word from Sabra’s mom or the police or anyone.”
    Eyes big and anxious, Emily kept hovering in the doorway, bag still slung over her shoulder.