Be Afraid by Mary Burton Read Free Book Online Page A

eye sockets that glared up at her. Who are you?
    “Why?” Rick asked.
    “Why what?” Jenna asked, raising her gaze.
    “Why’re you donating your services?”
    Her shoulders lifted in a small shrug. “I’ve a skill.” She tapped her index finger, calloused from holding a drawing pencil for countless hours, on the photo. “I can give this child a face. Isn’t that enough?”
    He studied her, shaking his head. “Just seems odd a sworn cop ends up in a bar drawing faces. Who takes that kind of path?”
    She closed the file but fell short of pushing it back toward him. “I didn’t realize volunteering would come with so many questions.”
    “Wouldn’t you be asking the same questions?”
    “Sure. I’m on leave but I’m still a cop. Hard not to help.” And now she had the last kind of case she’d ever wanted. A lost little girl. In a pink blanket.
    Detective Bishop put his hands on his thighs and pushed to his feet. “I’ve seen your work. Checked it out before we came. You’re good. Real good. And frankly I’m not worried about the whys driving you. I want this case solved.”
    Jenna rose, meeting his gaze. “Me too.”
    “When can you get started?” Detective Morgan stood and shifted his stance as if he was working out a painful kink in his hip.
    She searched for a grain of pity but couldn’t find one. “I’ve a freelance project but I can work around it. When do you want me to start?”
    “The medical examiner will have a clean sample for you by tomorrow afternoon. She said you could start any time.” Clean sample. That meant that the skull would be stripped of any remaining flesh and ready to accept the clay she’d use to create muscle and flesh.
    “Tomorrow then at two at the medical examiner’s office?”
    “I’ll be there.”
    “You know where it is?” Detective Morgan asked.
    “I can find it.” She’d have to do some figuring, but she’d not ask Detective Morgan for help. His you quit rattled in her head, making it impossible to ask him for help.
    You quit.
    She’d not quit. She’d taken a break so that she could get her head together. She’d not walked away from Baltimore forever. Just for now.
    Jenna walked Detectives Morgan and Bishop outside and without a backward glance, left her to consider the task she’d accepted. As they got into a dark SUV, she withdrew back into her home. She closed the door to the sound of the car engine rumbling and gravel crunching under tires.
    Nervous tension simmered in her belly as she thought about re-creating the face for Morgan’s Lost Girl. It was a job. A favor. Nothing she hadn’t done a thousand times before in Baltimore. But this time the idea of drawing the child’s face unsettled her enough to make her reconsider.
    You quit.
    Though tempted to back out of the job, she wouldn’t, if only to prove to herself and to Detective Morgan she was no quitter.
    Facing her easel, she turned the image around and studied the half-erased eyes. Automatically, she reached for her pencil and began to sketch. Eyes. Why was it always the eyes that haunted her?
    Her chest tightened and the more she stared at the portrait’s unfinished eyes the more anxious she grew. The cabin’s walls shrunk. Finally, unable to draw, she crossed the room and stepped out onto the back deck. Tilting her face toward the sun, she inhaled the sweet scent of wildflowers, pollen, and hay. Breathe in. Breathe out. She glanced down at her trembling hands. Never in her life could she remember being scared. Her aunt had always said Jenna attacked life. And yet here she stood unable to finish a damn portrait.
    “What the hell is wrong with me?” she whispered.
    Frayed edges of a pink blanket coiled through her thoughts.
    A similar blanket, soft and smelling of milk, had been a treasured item of hers when she was a child. She’d held it close when she’d laughed and played with her mother and father. Sometimes, she’d imagined it had been a princess cape or a magic carpet.