Cruel Intent by J. A. Jance Read Free Book Online Page A

victim to it as well.”
    Reluctantly, Ali found herself nodding in agreement. Dave was right. If, behind his smooth facade, Bryan Forester was a cold-blooded killer, then someone had to stand up for his daughters. That someone was Detective Dave Holman.
    “I’d best be going,” Dave said.
    Appalled by her own bad manners, Ali realized she hadn’t offered him anything to drink. “What about a cup of coffee?” she asked belatedly. “It won’t take long.”
    Dave shook his head. “No,” he said. “Sorry. First forty-eight and all that.”
    Ali, like most American TV viewers, knew what he meant: If a homicide isn’t solved in the first forty-eight hours after the crime, the likelihood that it will never be solved increases dramatically.
    Dave started for the door.
    “When you come to talk to Bryan’s crew,” Ali suggested, “you should probably plan on talking to the film crew as well.”
    “What film crew?” Dave asked.
    “They’ve been taping the entire remodeling project for a possible series on Home and Garden TV.”
    “Oh,” he said. “I see.” He gave her a cursory kiss on the way out. Clearly, his mind was elsewhere. Like a bloodhound hot on a trail, he refused to be distracted.
    Ali watched him as far as his car, then turned off the porch light and locked the door. She leaned her forehead against the door, and a sense of disappointment passed over her. Women always expected to juggle more than one thing at a time—family, work, relationships. Obviously, men did the same thing, but their priorities were entirely different. For Dave, duty came first. Being a good father had detracted from his ability to be a good lover. And now, with Morgan Forester’s homicide case taking precedence, Ali worried that the fatherhood part might be losing ground as well.
    Ali wondered if maybe the same thing was true for Bryan Forester. She could speak to the fact that the man was a conscientious worker, someone whose word was his bond. But what if being good at his job made him a bad husband or father? What then?
    As for Bryan’s two little girls? Ali was dismayed to realize that she didn’t even know their names. Saddened by the reminder that real evil was alive and well in the world, Ali went into the bedroom.
    After changing into her nightgown, she gently shifted Sam off her pillow and crawled into bed. Long after she turned out the light, though, Ali was still wide awake. At last, she turned on the light. While Sam stalked out of the bedroom in a huff, Ali took her computer out of the nightstand drawer and booted it up.

CHAPTER 3

    I n the aftermath of losing both her job and her marriage and encouraged by her son, Chris, Ali had started Cutlooseblog. com. Much to her surprise, what she had written about her own travails had resonated with plenty of other women. They had written in, sharing their own difficulties, their triumphs and tragedies. Some of those women, like the dauntless Velma T of Laguna Niguel, California, an eightysomething tough-as-nails cancer patient, Ali counted as friends.
    But as her own life changed, Ali had found that Cutloose hadn’t. Every few months a brand-new crop of women seemed to cycle through the website, dealing with the same kinds of issues Ali had already dealt with, drowning in their own pain, trying to put their lives back together. When Ali’s direction changed, when she went from agonizing about her life and times to something else—like remodeling the house or choosing plumbing fixtures, for instance—many of the people who continued to visit Cutloose weren’t interested. Her previous readers didn’t want to learn about architectural drawings or getting permits or battling dry rot or sistering joists or any of the other countless new things the Manzanita Hills house was bringing to Ali’s attention on a daily basis. It didn’t take long for Ali to realize there was a looming disconnect between her own life and those of her readers. Once she did, she had done the