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)
“No,” she said, getting hold of herself, “I was out here.” His introduction registered. Cincinnati Police. With a jolt, it suddenly occurred to her that he might have information about her son. She stepped forward. “Is this about—”
“No,” he said, flinching slightly, seeming to know immediately what she’d been about to ask. “We don’t have any new information about your son. I’m sorry about that.” He did look truly sorry, this stranger. “I have a couple of questions about a new case if you can spare me a few minutes.”
She regarded him for a moment, confusion sweeping through her. Confusion and disappointment. For a brief second there, she’d allowed herself to…hope. “Sure, Officer.”
“It’s detective,” he said, taking a small step forward. “Detective Copeland.” Now that her heart had resumed its normal pace and she could think straight—see straight—she took the stranger in. Tall and handsome. Dark hair and eyes, bronzed skin. He appeared to be Hispanic, but the last name Copeland didn’t speak to that.
They stood there staring at each other for several long beats, a strange something simmering in the air between them. The way he was looking at her… It made her feel exposed, jumpy, so she picked up the laundry basket, moving beyond the flapping fabric and turning back to where he stood. “If you’ll follow me, Detective Copeland, we can sit on the porch.”
They walked the short distance to the house, and she took a seat in the same chair she’d sat in a few days before when she’d met with her bully of a cousin. Detective Copeland took a seat across from her and squinted off into the yard behind her. “Nice place. Peaceful.”
“It needs a lot of work, but it’s getting there.”
“You live with your aunt, Ms. Stratton?”
“Josie. And no, my aunt passed away six months ago in a care facility. She left this place to me.” She looked toward the farmland beyond, the same way he’d done a moment before. All ten acres that now belonged to her.
“I’m sorry. About your aunt.” He rubbed at the back of his neck and then nodded to the house. “You plan on running it as a bed-and-breakfast again?”
Again. So he knew it’d been closed for a while. He worked for the Cincinnati Police Department. He probably knew a whole lot about her. Why this man was here and not one of the detectives she’d become familiar with? She didn’t know. “That’s the plan.” If I can figure out how to fix about seventeen things on my tier-one list with a couple thousand bucks in the bank. “Detective, what can I help you with?” She braced herself. She had to figure this man—for whatever reason they’d sent him, a detective who looked more like a Hollywood movie star than someone who worked with dead bodies—was here to tell her the case of her missing baby was being closed or filed as a cold case or however that sort of thing worked. It’s fine, she told herself. They can close it if they want. I never will.
Detective Copeland leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees. His dark eyes appeared black in the shade of her porch, his lashes long and lush, curled upward. His shoulders were broad, his white dress shirt pulled tight over his biceps in the position he was in. This man exuded masculinity. He was nothing like Cedric Murphy, the pot-bellied detective with the kind smile and the heavy-lidded eyes, the detective she still had a soft spot for, though she hadn’t spoken to him in…over a year. And even before that, it’d always been so brief. Detective Copeland seemed to be measuring her, choosing the words he was about to say carefully, the way people did who were familiar with her abduction. As if, even though almost a decade had passed, she might shatter if it was mentioned. As if she might have forgotten for a while and having it brought up would remind her. If only. “A few days ago, we found the body of a woman chained up in the basement of an abandoned house in Clifton.”
She froze. She hadn’t expected that. “A body? Chained?” The last word emerged croaky, and she cleared her throat.
Detective Copeland leaned back, nodding, his eyes fixed on her face. “Yes. Steel rings had been drilled into the concrete walls to hold the chain.”
She felt cold suddenly. “I see. And the girl, how had she died?”
“She starved to death.”
Josie let out a small, choked sound, sliding down slightly in her chair. “My God,” she murmured. “But, Detective, if you’re here because you think it’s the same man who—”
Detective Copeland held up his hand. “I know. The man who abducted you died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Your case was closed. I read the file. All of it.”