“Sophie,” Brian started, but there were no more words. He didn’t know what to say.
“If I were being objective, I would say that you did the right thing for your job. I understand that. It just feels violating that I was being watched when I didn’t know it. It’s creepy. And scary. I could have gone to prison, far away from my boys. That scenario feels every bit as terrifying as being stalked by a serial killer.” She pushed her hair from her face and cleared her throat. “All I did every single day was try my best. Every day, when I wake up, I say to myself. ‘Another step forward. Just keep trying. Just make it through another day.’”
“One foot and then the other.”
“Yup. It’s all I could ask of myself. And really, it’s all I could or should ask of you. I treated you badly. Yet I expected you to be loyal to me above all else.”
Brian opened his mouth to speak, but Sophia put up her hand to stop him.
“I have a lot to adjust to. A lot to absorb. But I’m done being angry with you. Right now, all I can feel is gratitude and maybe a glimmer of hope.”
Brian reached out and laced his fingers with hers. “What are you hoping?” he asked as his phone buzzed on the counter. Sophia gave him a tight-lipped smile, then got up and retrieved it for him.
He swiped to read the text then handed it to her. It was a picture of a US soldier in a sweat-ripened t-shirt, standing in front of the cave with the ring in his hand. The next picture was of him placing it as far as his arm could reach into the small opening. The last picture was a thumbs up with a GPS in his hand with the readout of the exact place she needed the relic to go.
“You’re free,” Brian said.
He waited while emotion swept over Sophia.
She looked around the room, up at the ceiling, as if she were searching out any menace that could be hiding in the corners. She nodded. “It feels that way, doesn’t it?” A surprised smile spread across her face. She lifted her arms straight up, like a runner crossing the finish line. “Wow. It’s like… Wow.” She hugged herself as she caught Brian’s gaze. “I’m free!” She threw her head back and laughed. When she sobered, she looked slowly around the room. “No more curse,” she whispered.
“Does this mean you don’t have to protect me anymore?” He swallowed hard as she focused back on him. “Now that Ashtart is home, does it mean you and I can be together?”
She blinked. “Yeah.” Her smile widened. “I think that’s what it means.” She crawled up onto the bed next to him. Very gently, she curled herself into his arms and released a deep sigh of perfect contentment.
“Yeah,” Brian said, planting a kiss in her hair. “I couldn’t agree more.”
This is not THE END
Continue reading about the Panther Force in their series Uncommon Enemies part of the Iniquus World of romantic suspense mystery thrillers. Fiona Quinn on Amazon
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Fiona Quinn is a four-time USA Today bestselling author, a Kindle Scout winner, and has been listed as an Amazon Top 100 author in: Romantic Suspense; Mystery, thriller, and suspense; Mysteries, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror.
Quinn writes suspense in her Iniquus World of books including: Lynx, Strike Force, Uncommon Enemies, Kate Hamilton Mysteries, and FBI Joint Task Force Series.
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Quinn is rooted in the Old Dominion where she lives with her husband and children. There, she pops chocolates, devours books, and taps continuously on her laptop with Little Bear sleeping near her feet.
J. J. Cagney: Facing the Past
Facing the Past
J. J. Cagney
Author’s Rating:
Language: ** Sexuality: ** Violence: **
For your convenience each book in this collection has been rated by the author for language, sexuality and violence, so that you as a reader can make an informed choice.
Our collection includes books that span the intensity range.
Language Intensity:
* - No or mild profanity, if any
** - Stronger profanity, with up to 5 uses of the f-word
*** - Strong language
Sexuality Intensity:
* - Sexual reference or no sexuality
** - Sexual reference which might include some details.
*** - Intense, descriptive sexual scenes
Violence Intensity
* - Violence, but no gory details.
** - Mild violence, fairly detailed with some blood
*** - Detailed violence
FACING THE PAST © 2018 J. J. Cagney
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
Edited by Nicole Pomeroy
Cover Design by Daqri Bernardo
Blurb
Facing the Past
A childhood tragedy. An unsolved murder. In the quest to rewrite her family’s past, Danielle Patterson could lose her future.
After her mother’s sudden death, the Dallas housewife struggles to hold her young family together…especially after she uncovers a dark secret that shatters her reality. Determined to bring her brother’s killer to justice, Danielle picks up exactly where her late mother left off. All too soon, her reckless pursuit proves Danielle—and her mother—knew the killer.
Facing the Past is a poignant domestic thriller that explores the interplay between relationships and regrets. If you like the lyrical prose of Gayle Forman and the gripping family drama of Marisa de los Santos, then you'll love J. J. Cagney’s captivating novel.
1
Nancy
Nancy was dying. Cancer nibbled away at her insides.
No more time.
She picked up the phone and called the detective who’d worked on the case all those years before.
“Chief Hardesty,” he rumbled into the phone.
“Arlen?” Nancy licked her lips. “This is—”
“Nancy,” he said, his voice softening. “I haven’t heard from you in years.”
“Probably ten, I’d guess. I wasn’t sure you were still there.”
He chuckled half-heartedly. “They haven’t gotten rid of me yet. Got about five more weeks till I’m outta here for good.”
“Oh.” She paused.
“What can I do for you, my dear?” His voice was softer still. He’d always tried to help her.
“I . . .” What to say? What to do?
“I wrote journals,” Nancy blurted, unsure about this call, about the decision she’d struggled to make for years.
“All right.” His voice stayed pleasant.
“I want . . . make sure Danielle gets them. Not Hank. Please.”
Chief Hardesty was silent for a long time. “Only way I can do that, Nancy, is for you to hand them over to my department or for them to be part of a search warrant.”
“In the attic. Boxed up in the back. Hank can’t have them. He’ll . . .” She blew out a breath. “He hired Trevor Dresden. He plans to put Trevor in the directorship for his founda
tion.”
“Hadn’t heard that,” Hardesty said, his voice contemplative.
“You need to talk to him.”
“Hank?”
“Trevor.”
“He was a little boy Nancy,” Hardesty said. His voice held a hint of pity, maybe even frustration. “The FBI did talk to him. I was there. He was so scared.”
Nancy clutched the phone. “I’m dying, Arlen. Soon. Trevor knew. He was there. Closer to the killer than I was even. Please. The journals. For Danielle—after you go through them . . . promise me.”
Chief Hardesty sighed in a long, drawn-out affair. She sensed that he wanted her to leave him alone. He must yearn for a time when the case of a kidnapped and murdered seven-year-old quit haunting him. At least that’s what Nancy supposed his sigh meant.
“You want me to reopen the case?” Arlen asked.
Nancy thought of Danielle, of her pretty green eyes and the worry she buried deep inside herself. The idea that came out, ever so softly over the years, that Danielle considered herself unlovable. Nancy’s fault for not being the mother her daughter deserved.
With each passing moment, Nancy’s mistakes piled higher, choking her. She leaned her head back against the recliner’s tufted pillow. The memory bubbled up, taking over her consciousness as it always did.
Nancy screamed his name. Danielle was pressed against Nancy’s heaving chest, clutched tight. Too tight. Nancy couldn’t make her arms loosen. Her heart beat so hard, her ribs ached with each pounding.
“Jonny, Jonathan!”
Danielle mewled into Nancy’s neck.
The street and park were empty; it didn’t matter how many times Nancy looked, how far she jogged up and down the road, clutching her daughter, yelling Jonny’s name.
Nancy’s breath broke as she stumbled over Jonny’s ball glove lying on a crack in the sidewalk. Just five feet from their station wagon.
Five feet.
“Yes,” she gasped, pulling herself, grief fresh, from the recollection.
“I’ll do what I can,” Arlen replied.
But Nancy heard the skepticism in his voice.
She’d waited too long.
2
Arlen
Arlen Hardesty set the phone back in the cradle. Damn. Not the call he’d wanted today—not that he’d ever turn Nancy Foster away. Still, he was days from retirement now. He and Irene marked each day off the calendar after dinner. Over the last six months, the ritual became soothing, pleasant, moving them a day closer to an extended vacation and less stress.
He closed his eyes and dropped his face into his palms. Oh, he remembered that gruesome day—and the harrowing week, month, even the year that followed. An investigation of a murdered child wasn’t something he was ever likely to forget, and Jonathan Foster’s had been his first.
1983
Hank led Arlen into the parlor, its disuse evident from the vacuum marks in the light brown shag. Arlen edged cautiously into the spindle-legged orange-and-green floral chair toward which Hank had gestured.
“I’m really sorry, ma’am,” Arlen said, looking to Nancy. “Y’all know pretty much where things stand already.” He rolled and unrolled the edge of the dress blazer he kept in his office on a hanger since the day he’d made detective three-and-a-half years and seven pounds earlier. He could feel the fabric pulling apart at the stitches up the back seam and imagined the darker black of that last bit before the seam became visible as he leaned forward. He needed to lose some weight. Or get a bigger suit coat.
“We’re gonna keep at it, keep looking. Of course.” His voice was hushed as he eyed the baby lying prone in Nancy Foster’s lap.
Nancy’s eyes, red-rimmed and wild, veered over to her husband, who moved to sit next to her on the couch.
“When does the ground search start up again in the morning?” Hank rasped, his throat sounding dry.
“At first light, maybe before.”
Arlen looked first into Hank’s then Nancy’s eyes, holding her stare until her breathing regulated.
“I want to go, too,” Hank said.
Danielle whimpered, and Nancy began to stroke the baby’s back soothingly. Pat pat pat. Pat pat pat. Pat pat pat.
Arlen decided sheer exhaustion kept the baby, Danielle, from going into another full-blown wail. The mite sniffled and burrowed in closer to her mother. Hank leaned closer and placed a hand on Nancy’s thigh, down by the knee, as she continued to shudder, her teeth clicking.
“Now, Mr. Foster, I can’t tell you no.”
“That’s right; you can’t. So just tell me where to be.” Hank’s pointed chin thrust out, the sloping ridge of his jaw snapping in, out, up, down.
“Now, I can’t tell you no,” Arlen continued, failing to keep his voice as neutral as intended. “But I can tell you I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
Hank stood, a sharp jerk of a motion. Arlen watched as six feet of thick-boned male pantomimed grace. Except fear and despair had eaten at Hank’s joints, muscle, bone.
“Then it’s a good thing I didn’t ask,” Hank said, his voice escalating from a low, almost inaudible drone to a near shout, stepping forward.
A crunch.
A red fire truck was buried in the carpet when Hank lifted his foot. Both men stared at it. The ladder lay broken, the upper part caught in the couch’s stitching. Hank collapsed back onto the couch.
Arlen sighed. “Meet us at the station at dawn,” he mumbled, his gaze stuck on the truck. His son had one like it.
Hank nodded. Arlen lifted his head, opened his mouth, glanced back at the truck and shut it. He tilted his head to Nancy before following Hank to what he assumed was a seldom-used front door. Its intricate leaded glass side panel caught the light.
The door swung closed. The click of metal catching metal jolted out from inside the now-silent house. Arlen drove home that night to sit by his son’s narrow bed, a prayer of thanks looping through his head.
Still a good twenty minutes to full light. The air settled over them in a cold, though sticky aura. Clouds built at the edges of the horizon. Seventy-two people stood in the main room of police headquarters, in a pseudo-line of churning bodies, awaiting their assignments. Half of that number was police personnel, either local or from neighboring areas. The rest was concerned friends, mostly fathers, shaking their heads, stomping their feet, not meeting each other’s eyes and unable to bear the sight of Hank as he slumped against one of the station’s gray walls.
Arlen stood at the front with the chief of police, the county sheriff, and someone in a suit none of the locals knew, but whom the uniformed officers eyed warily. Assignments were divvied and handed down. Groups of six to eight, covering a fifty-square-mile radius. For now.
They bundled into cars, doors slamming, voices low.
“Can’t believe it. Just can’t believe we’re doing this,” Arlen said. He heaved out the faintly sweet breath from the four sugars he took in each cup of coffee. He rubbed his hand over his eyes, removing the crud that gathered near his thick-bridged nose, then swiping his hand absently against his jean-clad leg.
“I spent the night tossing so much my wife got mad a couple of times. I’d go in and watch my kids sleeping for hours, seems like. Go back to the bedroom and get kicked out again. Don’t know how you do it regularly,” he said, facing the man in the suit.
Suit’s answer: a shrug, sip of coffee, eyes creasing and measuring the disbanding group.
“Any live wires in the bunch?” Suit asked. “I want to know where they all were yesterday at the time of the child’s disappearance. Anyone that showed up here today, I want to know.”
Chief stood nearby, sucking in his gut, unable to keep it from spilling over his brass-and-silver belt buckle. He said, “Now see here, it isn’t gonna be one of our own.”
“You don’t know who took that boy. In fact, you’ve got zilch,” Suit said, his voice quiet. “So, we start with what we do have. Thirty-seven people unaffiliated with this or another department showe
d up today to look for Jonathan Foster. I want to know why they’re here and we’ll start with where they were yesterday.”
Chief mumbled, cursed, then headed back to his desk because “someone’s gotta man the fort whiles you boys are out there.”
Arlen trudged off to join his group, his head hanging low between his shoulder blades. The first gray hairs shot upward from the cowlick at his crown, highlighted by the fluorescent tubes in his bathroom earlier this morning. He’d stared at them, mesmerized.
The helicopter was circling the town, thrumming through the air in lazy, large loops. Mosquitoes buzzed, swarmed and men cursed as they swatted ineffectually.
Arlen shot a quick glance down at his battered, scratched watch when the call came in: 12:23. Thoughts of his kids, the heat edging upward of ninety degrees, and a diet of caffeine and a stale jelly donut turned his intestines into a murky, dank swamp.
“Hardesty, where you at?”
“Southeast edge of my plot, over by Framb’s back pasture.”
“I’m on the other side, by the ditch. You need to head out thisaway. Soon’s you can.”
“On my way.”
Arlen’s stomach lurched in a horrendous exchange of icing and burning. He swiped his neck, wishing he hadn’t drunk a whole pot of coffee. He already knew what he’d find as he stepped up to the edge of the ditch, but knowing still didn’t prepare him for it. He could never have prepared himself for finding Jonathan’s body.
“Damnation and hellfire,” he hissed. “Christ, God Almighty. Suit’s gonna need to see this.”
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