Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 107766 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107766 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Zach thought of the professor, cringing at the picture that still came to mind when his thoughts returned to that dark basement where he had been carved up, left to live and not to die. It had been Charles Hartsman’s final battle. And he’d won, at least, Zach supposed, in Charles’s own mind. The professor’s career was over, he’d left the university disgraced, his family was gone, and for the rest of his life, people would cringe when they looked at his scarred and mutilated face.
“There’s someone at the front desk asking to speak with you, Cope,” another detective said as he walked to his own desk.
Zach rubbed a hand over his stubbly jaw. Media, most likely. Damn, he was tired. He’d been stretched thin for weeks, living on caffeine and adrenaline, trying his damnedest to give Josie the space she’d asked for.
Josie.
Fuck, but he missed her.
He made his way to the front desk where an attractive woman, who looked to be in her thirties, stood next to another attractive woman a few decades older. They were both dressed conservatively, understated, yet obviously expensive jewelry flashed at him from both women’s ears and fingers. Designer purses were slung over their shoulders. Definitely not reporters. Curiosity spiked. “Detective Copeland?” the younger woman asked, stepping forward.
“Yes,” he said, offering his hand to both women.
“My name is Darla Broderick, and this is my mother Harriet Arenstein. Is there somewhere we may speak?”
Zach ushered them into an office nearby and offered them a seat. “No, thank you,” the younger woman said. “This won’t take long.” She glanced at her mother. “That man on the news? Charles Hartsman?”
“Yes?” Zach asked, frowning, leaning back against the desk behind him.
“My mother just confessed to me that she’d been seeing him for a few years now.”
Seeing him? Mrs. Arenstein’s cheeks heated. Ah. “He told me he was an Italian immigrant who’d left a life of poverty in his home country to live here in America. He’d arrived with little else than the shirt on his back.” Her flush deepened. “He was very convincing.”
Darla Broderick cleared her throat. “Get to the point, Mother.”
“Well, he…ah, that is—”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Her daughter stepped forward. “He hoodwinked her. Stole from her and then disappeared.”
“Stole from her?” Zach asked.
“Yes,” Mrs. Arenstein said, her expression filled with shame. “Two million dollars.”
Zach looked between mother and daughter, a certainty taking over. Charles Hartsman was long gone. And he had a strong feeling other women would come forward with similar stories. Those eight years had not only been spent planning and strategizing for the downfall of Professor Merrick, but for his own escape.
We won’t be seeing each other again, he’d told Josie.
The final battle has ended.
The war is over.
Later, Zach sat at his desk as the sun began lowering in the sky. A quiet buzz still surrounded him as the other detectives in the room worked, attempting to bring justice and closure to the citizens of Cincinnati.
And yet justice had been denied to Josie, her mother, Marshall Landish, and the women Charles had tortured and killed, making them all unwitting players in the war waged inside a sick and twisted mind.
Perhaps, Zach mused, a war waged inside them all. A struggle that could either trap you in the past or allow you to move freely into the future. He thought of Josie’s struggles. He thought of his own.
That protective streak, that deep-seated need to make right what the world got so wrong. He knew where it had originated. Admitted where it’d come from. It’d been born from his own guilt at living when his little brother had not. It should have been Zach, the outsider—though no one had ever made him feel that way—not Aaron, the one who was rightly there. It was warped thinking; he knew that. Irrational, even. But God, how the things you believed about yourself, irrational or not, could rule your choices. Your fears. Your insecurities and the blame you assigned yourself. And, if that was far too painful, you cast it off on others.
As Charles Hartsman had done.
Casus belli.
Zach straightened his desk quickly before heading for the door. It’d been another twelve-hour day, and he was bone weary.
He stepped outside into the warm summer evening, the sky awash in shades of pink and orange, beauty cast over a broken world. As he walked to his truck, he heard the low strains of…country music? His pulse jumped, and he looked up. Josie.
She stood leaning against her car, the passenger door open as country music played from her radio, set at a low volume. She was wearing jean shorts and a cowgirl hat.
“I heard I might find a cowboy here,” she said, a smile gracing her lips, nervousness in her eyes.
Zach moved closer, his heart clenching. She was so goddamned beautiful. He tipped his chin. “Looking for a cowboy, are you?” the line came out scratchy and raw.