Running for Her Life by Beverly Long Read Free Book Online

hours with her new customers and neighbors. And looking back, she knew that was the day when the healing had started.
    The people of Wyattville had opened their arms and their hearts, and she’d found a place to call home. Day by day, she’d gotten both mentally and physically stronger. She’d started sleeping at night and stopped her steady diet of antacid pills. The small town had healed her.
    Tara stopped at the very edge of Washington Park and unfolded her lawn chair. She waved to several customers and they waved back. It wasn’t until she’d sat down that she saw him.
    Six feet of pure muscle. Before her nightmare with Michael began, she’d have appreciated this man’s long legs, trim waist, broad chest. She might even have joked with coworkers about his fine rear end and speculated about other attributes. But now, with his pressed uniform, hat and shiny black shoes, he all but screamed cop, and it made her stomach cramp up in fear.
    His stance was comfortable as he confronted a carload of teenagers who’d decided that the barricade across the road clearly didn’t apply to them. But she wasn’t fooled. He didn’t carry himself like a cop who’d gotten soft working a desk and doing the occasional crowd control. No, definitely not. And he’d certainly handled his gun last night as if it was an extension of his arm.
    Was it as simple as it all sounded? Had he really come to Wyattville to help his old friend? But who had the kind of job that they could just up and leave at any time for six weeks to go work somewhere else? No. There was more to the story.
    And she loved a good story. Got jazzed piecing information together. There’d been few who were as good at re-creating a series of events that made sense.
    Whether it was covering a political campaign, a murder trial or the transgressions of the big banks, she’d loved being a reporter. Loved seeing the results of her work on the newsstand. Loved the editorial deadlines, even loved the notoriously bad coffee in the break room.
    But that was a long time ago. Now she needed to keep a low profile. She needed to stay out of Chief Vernelli’s way and if she couldn’t manage that, she needed to make darn sure that she was at the top of her game. She couldn’t afford to slip up, to give him any reason to look at her closer.
    She angled her chair, just enough that he was in her peripheral vision but not enough that he’d catch her eye. She bought a watery lemonade from two young girls and was relieved when the first floats came by. She was clapping for the Wyattville fire truck and volunteer fire department when a shadow blocked out the hot sun.
    She twisted her body so quickly that one side of her lawn chair lifted off the ground, and she would have crashed to the side if a strong hand hadn’t steadied her.
    “Careful,” he said.
    “Chief Vernelli,” she managed.
    He glanced at the bandage on her knee. “Bumps and bruises getting better?”
    She nodded and prayed that he’d move along. Instead, he spread his legs, shifted his weight back onto his heels, hooked his thumbs in the loops of his belt and watched the parade like it was Thanksgiving Day and he had a boatload of stock invested in Macy’s.
    She ignored him, and he appeared as if it didn’t bother him in the least. When the funeral home director and his family rode by on a float decorated as a coffin, the crowd was peppered with wrapped caramels. Jake reached a long arm up and easily caught a piece. He tossed it in Tara’s lap.
    “It’s your candy,” Tara protested.
    He shrugged. “I don’t have much of a sweet tooth. I’d arm-wrestle you over a bag of potato chips, though.”
    More proof that he wasn’t normal. She unwrapped the candy and popped it in her mouth as the last tractor belched and snorted its way past. Tara stood up and folded her lawn chair.
    “What’s next?” Jake asked.
    I watch to see what direction you go in and make a mad dash in the other. “Lunch. Then we’ll head