A Cold Dark Place by Gregg Olsen Read Free Book Online Page B

I looked, friends don't mess
around like we did."
    Her skin crawled. Sleeping with any man who still used
the term "messing around" for making love was confirmation that she had, in fact, really made a mistake.
    "Listen, Cary, I don't want to hurt you any more than I
apparently have. I didn't mean for things to go so far."
    "So far?"
    His voice became tight and she could imagine the veins
on his neck popping like night crawlers on a rainy pavement.
    "You know what I mean. I'm not ready for a relation ship." Again, Emily censored herself. She didn't add the last
bit that passed through her mind: "with you. Ever."

    "Don't do this. Let's talk."
    "We already have"
    "Let's work it out. Let's have a drink tonight so we can
talk."
    Emily lost it. She felt like their roles had been reversed.
She was operating on logic and rational thought and he was
fluttering around with hurt feelings, treading water in a
stormy sea of emotions.
    "I can't talk," she said. "Hear me on this. I don't want to
talk. I don't want to see you. It was a mistake, Cary. Let it go."
    "I can't stop thinking about you," he said. "We had something and I'm not going to let it go. Why should I?"
    "What do you mean? Are you forcing me to get a restraining order? Jesus, Cary. You're a goddamn lawyer. You
know you can't harass me"
    She pulled the phone from her ear as Cary's voice carried
like a gunshot to the side of her head.
    "You are a stupid bitch and you can't do this to me. You
belong to me.. ."
    She pressed the CALL END button.

Chapter Five
Tuesday, 2:00 n.M., Cherrystone, Washington
    Java the Hut loomed like a mirage and Emily pulled in
and absentmindedly ordered the special of the day-a doubletall white chocolate mocha. She wondered about the wisdom
of making a mocha with white chocolate anyway. Was white
chocolate really chocolate after all?
    The young woman at the window took her order.
    "Make it a triple shot," Emily said. "And no whip."
    Emily stared out the window and mentally sorted the preliminary findings phoned in from Spokane County's coroner's
office. The coroner's assistant talked with the dispassionate
voice of someone who worked with violence every day. She
rattled off the findings, laundry-list style, without taking a
single breath. None of what she said was earth-shattering,
but it was good that what Emily had seen at the crime scene
matched what the techies were finding in the dank, cramped,
and acrid-smelling basement lab. Observation and science
went hand in hand in the courtroom provided they ever got that far. It appeared that both of the parents had been shot at
close range, nearly execution style. The youngest victim was
shot in the back from some distance, perhaps indicating flight.
Maybe Donny had come across Nicholas as he fired away at
his parents? And in running to get help or save his own life,
he had been blasted by Nick with the shotgun? Their dressor lack of it-suggested evening or early morning as the time
of attack. Then again it could have been the raging fury of the
tornado, ripping off their clothes. Jason's plucked-chicken
comment came to mind.

    The barista attempted to make small talk as the espresso
machine sent a cloud of steam into the interior of what had
once been a Fotomat.
    "Busy day?"
    "Absolutely killer," Emily said without an iota of sarcasm.
    The young woman smiled and shrugged as the steam
forced its way through the tamped coffee.
    "Tell me about it," she said. "I had to make seven drinks
for a lady who was taking them to her office. My lineup of
regulars was madder than you-know-what"
    Emily smiled. She didn't say anything about the stupid
white chocolate coffee she was going to drink. She didn't say
anything about what she'd seen at the Martin place. Or who
she was looking for. People would find out soon enough.
Cherrystone, which had just dodged a bullet with the tornado
in terms of no loss of human life, was about to be put on the
map as the hometown of a