and I really don’t need your help. I appreciate the offer, but we’re fine.”
“I think I’ll just stick around and see what’s what.” He smiled at her. “Since the chief invited me, it might be bad manners to just leave.”
She looked over at the chief, who was listening to the tech with interest, seemingly unaware of Gage and Sam’s confrontation. She turned back to the tall, muscular man and talked herself into a form of composure.
“I have no doubt that this was not an invitation, and did not just happen by accident,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “You forced your way in here. Or used your connections to get here. The only question I have is why? Why are you here?”
“I’m here to help,” he said calmly.
“I don’t need your help,” she said again, through clenched teeth. “Go back to Salt Lake. Any ideas you have are of no interest to me.”
“Sam, are you ever going to get past the Clarkston case?”
She crossed her arms and glared at him. She could feel her lips tighten, and her scalp tingled as she watched his eyes narrow.
“What? Why are you looking at me that way?” he asked.
“Get past the Clarkston case?”
“Yes, that’s what I said.”
“Get past the fact that a young girl was about to be married to her fucking uncle, literally, and was scared out of her mind?”
“It happens every day. We couldn’t stop it. Her only hope was for us to bring the entire family down, and free her that way. And you know it.”
“No, no I don’t, because later that night she ended up dead, didn’t she?”
Sam knew her voice carried across the office, and she self-consciously looked around before motioning him closer.
He stepped closer, but there was fire in his eyes. His broad chest moved rapidly, and she saw he had his hands in fists. He took another step closer, then spoke: “She died, because you let her think she might be able to get away. You gave her hope. Your job was not to help her escape. It was to bring down that family. And you failed.”
His words cut into her like she was nothing more than warm butter and he was holding a spoon.
“I could have saved her.”
“You got her killed.”
Sam turned and walked away from him, fighting back tears, because neither one of them would ever know the truth. Could she have saved Mary Ann? If it hadn’t been for Sam, would the timid girl just have gone along with her family’s horrendous plans and married a man—her uncle—who didn’t want her? Unhappy, molested, but alive—was that a better life?
Sam would never know. And neither would Mary Ann.
Then Sam turned and walked over to D-Ray and Paul, the lesser of two evils. Paul was the past and sad memories, but Gage was still with her. It pissed her off that she couldn’t forget him. Even worse, she wanted to hate him and knew she didn’t.
EIGHT
Sam pulled up into the driveway of her town house, located in the middle of Kanesville, a short walking distance from just about everything, including the police station. Of course, she never walked anywhere. She either sped in her car or ran on foot.
The tree-lined road to her home was dotted with older houses on each side, abodes that had been there since long before her birth. Her own town house was newer and stood out like a sore thumb among the small redbrick and white cottage-type houses that made up old Kanesville. She both liked and hated the location. Much like her life.
She’d known all along these weren’t suicides. The fact that someone had taken pictures of the dead bodies proved it. Add to that Gage’s reappearance in her life—if only her work life—and she wanted to scream. Now what? And why?
The night air was stifling and hot, still nearly eighty degrees, but she hadn’t turned the air conditioner on for the short drive from the school to her house—she had a chill that would not go away.
The pictures of those three teenagers danced through her head, and she closed her eyes tightly, then
Greg Herren
Crystal Cierlak
T. J. Brearton
Thomas A. Timmes
Jackie Ivie
Fran Lee
Alain de Botton
William R. Forstchen
Craig McDonald
Kristina M. Rovison