by Chris Culver
“Just checking to make sure that thing we talked about is still okay,” she said, looking at me. Then she looked at Julia. “I’m sorry if I’m interrupting anything, Captain Green.”
“It’s just Julia now,” she said. “And it’s good you’re here. My daughter needs to get going. I’ve got a letter to write.”
I looked to my mom. “You going to be okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” she said. She looked at Gwenn. “Can you give me one more minute, Officer Collins? I’ll send Joe right down.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Gwenn, stepping outside. Mom looked at me.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked.
I nodded. “I will be.”
“Good,” she said, standing. “The last time I talked to Travis, you had given him a letter of resignation. You still going to quit?”
I shook my head.
“No. They need me. There are two missing kids we’re worried about, and there’s always Spring Fair next year. Without me, they’ll fall apart. I’m the linchpin that holds the entire department together.”
“I’m glad you’ve kept your sense of humility over the years.”
I smiled at her and started for the door but stopped when I touched the handle.
“Do you and Dad still make a big lunch on Sunday after church?
“Every week,” she said. “Assuming we can rouse him from bed, your brother will be there. You want us to set you a plate?”
It had been several years since I last sat down with the family on Sunday afternoon. Dad had never stopped asking, but I kept turning him down every time. If these past few weeks had shown me anything, though, it was that I needed my family. Julia and Doug weren’t my birth parents, but they were the mom and dad I’d chosen. What’s more, they had chosen me. It was time I stopped pushing away the people I loved most.
I nodded.
“Yeah. Set me a plate. I’ll see you on Sunday.”
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The Girl in the Motel
Thank you so much!
Did you like The Girl in the Motel? Then you’re going to love The Girl in the Woods!
Detective Mary Joe Court returns in the second novel in New York Times bestselling author Chris Culver’s gripping Joe Court series.
A volunteer found the body while searching the Missouri backwoods for a pair of missing teenagers. Somebody shot her in the chest and dumped her at a campsite deep in the woods.
It’s tornado season in central Missouri. The air is still. The sky is dark green. There’s a wall cloud to the west.
A nasty storm is coming…
Detective Joe Court knows her team shouldn’t be out there, but they need to collect as much evidence as they can before it’s destroyed.
Little does Joe know, that storm should be the least of her concerns…
Check it out at Kobo!
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About the Author
Chris Culver is the New York Times bestselling author of the Ash Rashid series and other novels. After graduate school, Chris taught courses in ethics and comparative religion at a small liberal arts university in southern Arkansas. While there and when he really should have been grading exams, he wrote The Abbey, which spent sixteen weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list and introduced the world to Detective Ash Rashid.
Chris has been a storyteller since he was a kid, but he decided to write crime fiction after picking up a dog-eared, coffee-stained paperback copy of Mickey Spillane’s I, the Jury in a library book sale. Many years later, his wife, despite considerable effort, still can’t stop him from bringing more orphan books home. He lives with his family near St. Louis.