Something was clogging Kelly’s throat, and her eyes burned, so she shifted her head. If only her own purple, hand-me-down bike didn’t have to be in the next spot she looked. On the grass farther down the sidewalk. The exact same place where she’d dropped it when she’d unfrozen enough to scream. Once she’d started, she couldn’t stop.
“Your parents will be here in a couple of minutes. Do you think you can give a description... I mean tell us what the man who took your friend looked like?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
As if she could ever forget anything about him. The closed-lipped smile. That raspy voice and his tight jaw while Emily had kicked and scratched to escape, her black ponytail whipping from side to side. A movie villain come to life, with wild eyes and hairy arms. And the only person who could have helped her friend had been too scared to do anything but watch.
That strange lightness she’d had inside her belly a few times in the past half hour floated up again. Was that relief? What kind of friend was she to take comfort in the fact that the bad man had grabbed Emily instead of her? Was that why her eyes were dry when she should have been sobbing by now? Why the officer kept patting her arm and sneaking peeks at her face? No one could ever know the truth. That she was a bad person. That she cared only about herself.
“Don’t worry, sweetie. We’re going to find her.”
Kelly jerked her head to look back at her. She was nine. They couldn’t fool her. Police officers were supposed to tell the truth, and the lady was lying. How did she know, anyway? She hadn’t seen the meanness on the guy’s face. Or the fear in Emily’s enormous chocolate-colored eyes.
Stay quiet, or I’ll be back for you.
Kelly had skipped telling the police that part. If she had, it would have made what the man said real. She’d already disobeyed his instructions by calling for help. Telling the police about it, too, might make him keep his promise.
She turned to the window again, just as another police car, an ambulance and a truck that looked like her mom’s pulled up along the curb. They could ask all the questions they wanted to. They could search for clues and turn on their sirens and pretend that they could make everything better. But Kelly already knew the truth.
Emily was gone forever.
Copyright © 2019 by Dana Corbit Nussio
ISBN-13: 9781488041532
Cavanaugh Stakeout
Copyright © 2019 by Marie Rydzynski-Ferrarella
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 22 Adelaide St. West, 40th Floor, Toronto, Ontario M5H 4E3, Canada.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and in other countries.
www.Harlequin.com
Cavanaugh Stakeout (Cavanaugh Justice Book 41) Page 25