AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yeah. I called Burke when my dad was killed. He’d known Dad, too, and loved him.” She smiled sadly. “Kind of like he loved your dad.”
“Father figures.”
“Exactly. Burke was on his way to me, only half an hour out when Jake started hitting Chelsea and me. He got there after the cops did and... just handled everything. Got me a good lawyer. Made sure he got photos of my face. And Chelsea’s. And he checked in on Harper when she went to emergency foster care.”
As had her SBI boss and his wife. Steven and Jenna were good people. She missed them.
“So you went to work for Burke?”
“I did, but not right away. There was an inquiry, and I was cleared. Especially when Chelsea turned over the tape showing that Jake had killed Dad.”
He was quiet for a long moment. “But it also let everyone know that her daughter had been molested. That can’t have been an easy decision for her to make.”
Molly stared at him, something inside her chest squeezing almost painfully. “No one else has understood that. Everyone was all, like, of course Chelsea showed the tape, but she and I fought about it. I didn’t want her to because it would put Harper in the spotlight, but my lawyer was afraid I wouldn’t be cleared without it.”
He tilted his head, studying her, his hazel eyes filled with an understanding she hadn’t seen anywhere else. Not even from Burke. “You feel guilty about that, too.”
She swallowed. “I do. I mean, we got Harper out of there, but she’s always going to have that over her head. That it happened, and that everyone knows. Therapy has helped—all of us. But... yeah, I feel guilty.” A whole lot more over that than over shooting Jake in the head.
Molly owed her sister a debt that she’d never be able to repay. But she’d tried, taking care of them and making sure they were safe. Until today.
She hoped she was overreacting, hoped that whoever had been following them earlier would focus on her and not her family. Part of her was tempted to quit this job and go home and barricade herself in their apartment. But that would be overreacting. Burke had said that he’d put someone on protective detail, and she trusted him to do so.
“I’m sorry,” Gabe said again.
She shrugged. “It’s done. It’s over.”
“I meant that I’m sorry I made your father’s death seem unimportant earlier today.”
She met his gaze, finding his eyes had grown calm and warm and...
Nope, nope, nope.She did not find his eyes compelling. His gaze did not make her feel... safe. She wanted to snarl at herself, but he’d think she was crazy. So she only nodded. “Thank you. I’ll do whatever I can to find out who killed your father. I hope you know that.”
“I already did. Now I’m even more certain.” He glanced at her closed laptop. “What else did you find in the police reports while I was cooking in that horrible thing you dared to call a kitchen?”
Her lips twitched up in a small, but real, smile. “It really is pretty awful.”
“It’s a hot plate, a refrigerator that was built while there was still a Berlin Wall, and a microwave that may have cooked my liver while I stood in front of it. What is Burke thinking? It’s a menace.”
“He’s thinking that if he puts in a better kitchen, we’d all live here, and he wants us to have ‘work-life balance’ or some such shit.”
“I hope irradiated livers are covered by his insurance.”
She chuckled. “It’s not that bad. The microwave makes a mean bag of popcorn.”
He scoffed. “It couldn’t make a kind bag of popcorn.”
Feeling better, she reached for the shrimp and grits and took another bite. “You managed okay. This is delicious.”
“Thank you, but anyone could make this. It’s simple.”
“We can’t. Well, maybe Val can. She’s one of our PIs. She has hidden talents we keep discovering like Easter eggs in a video game.”
She went back to eating and he watched her, saying nothing until she’d scraped the last grain of grits from the bowl. Then he nodded to the laptop.
“What did you find?”
“Three cases that your father investigated where either the perpetrator or a family member vowed revenge. Of course, there are likely other cases where the angry party wasn’t stupid enough to threaten a cop where he could hear it and put it in his report. But I’ve got something to start on. I’ll do background checks on the three possibilities and see if they’re still alive, for starters. Then I’ll find out where they are now and...” She hesitated, not wanting to cause him pain. But he’d said that he wanted to be a part of the investigation. “And where they were six weeks ago.”
