Bleeding Through: A Rachel Goddard Mystery (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) by Sandra Parshall Read Free Book Online

guilty person and sends him to a mental hospital instead of jail.”
    That sounded like a defense to Rachel, and it stung. Had he been humoring her all along, secretly dismissing her anger at Detective Fagan as unjustified while letting her believe he agreed? She pressed her fingers to her side, where she felt the raised edge of a scar through the fabric of her shirt. The memory seldom invaded her conscious thoughts anymore, but now and then it still ambushed her at night, the whole terrifying experience playing out in her dreams, until the burning pain of the bullet slicing into her body jolted her awake. “Just keep him away from me while he’s here,” she said.
    “There’s no reason you have to cross paths.”
    Rachel rose, grabbed their plates and carried them to the sink. She took out her anger and disappointment on the dishes, scraping leftovers into the sink, jamming them into the garbage disposal. Tom hovered beside her as if uncertain what to do or say. “Go,” she said. “You have work to do.”
    He laid a hand on her shoulder. Rachel froze.
    “I don’t want to leave with you mad at me.”
    Rachel closed her eyes, exhaled, forced her body to relax. She wasn’t being fair to Tom. Whether he was right or wrong, whether he did it smoothly or clumsily, his first impulse would always be to protect her, and that was all he was trying to do now. “Michelle, Fagan,” she said. “It’s just a lot at once.”
    “I know.” Tom leaned to kiss her on the cheek. “We’ll have to make some time to talk. I’ll try not to be too late.”
    Rachel turned to kiss him on the lips, reining in the urge to throw her arms around him and hold on. Then he was gone.
    ***
    Driving away from the farm, Tom tried to put Rachel out of his mind for now. He couldn’t shake the feeling, though, that he’d let her down. He wished he’d told her earlier about Fagan working the missing person case so she wouldn’t have been blindsided by the news that the detective was about to show up in Mason County.
    As if hitting her with that wasn’t enough, he’d come off sounding negative about her sister. Rachel had surprised him with the news that Michelle would arrive in less than twenty-four hours, and he knew he hadn’t done a good job of hiding his feelings. Rachel loved her sister, but nothing she’d told Tom made him want to have Michelle as a guest in their house. She was dumping a huge emotional burden on Rachel, with her story about being stalked. Tom wasn’t sure he believed any of it. Anonymous calls? Could be kids playing pranks. Things moved around in her office? The cleaning staff could be responsible. But if she really was being stalked, they had to worry about the guy following her to Mason County.
    He drove a few miles down the road to the Hadley property. Blake and Maureen lived with their younger son Skeet and Blake’s mother in a big white farmhouse that had been in the family for generations. The farm around it had gradually diminished in size as family members went into other types of work and sold off parcels. Brian, the older of Blake and Maureen’s two sons, hadn’t done any farming, but he’d built a small house of his own on the land when he married. His widow, Grace, still lived there with their two kids, a boy who probably couldn’t remember his father and a girl born shortly after Brian’s murder.
    Tom parked in the gravel driveway and mounted the steps to the wide, covered porch. He rapped the brass door knocker, in the shape of a banjo, hard enough to be heard at the back of the house, in case the family was still at the dinner table.
    Blake, the tall, broad-shouldered head of the family, swung open the door. When he saw Tom, he crumpled his paper napkin in one hand, raising ropey muscles along his forearm. Before Tom could speak, Blake said, “Soon as I heard about the Beecher girl, I knew you’d be coming around. We’re finishing up supper. Might as well get the interrogation over with, I