Emily Kenyon 01 - A Cold Dark Place by Gregg Olsen Read Free Book Online

Kiplinger and Emily Kenyon stood in front of a pair of cameras from two of the three Spokane TV stations. For the second time in a week, Cherrystone had made the news. First the tornado and now a triple homicide.
    Twenty years of nothing happening around here and now this, Emily thought as she stood next to the sheriff and the cameras recorded the story for the evening news. The attention was unwanted for a couple of reasons. One deeply personal. The other had to do with pride. Both were rooted in an incident that had shaken the foundation of her life and sent her to Cherrystone to start over. To hide. And if this story gets picked up by the Spokane station’s sister station in Seattle they’ll think I’ve let myself go.
    “We don’t know exactly what happened or even when it happened,” the sheriff said. “It appears Mark and Margaret Martin and their son Donovan are the victims of a brutal homicide.”
    “What about Nicholas? The oldest Martin boy?” The reporter shoved her microphone as if it were a fire poker. She wanted Kiplinger to spill some major news.
    “Is he a suspect?”
    Emily took that one. “No. We do, however, consider him a person of interest. If anyone knows of his whereabouts, please contact the sheriff’s department”
    Tuesday, 12:25 RM., Cherrystone, Washington
    It was the biggest mistake of a very long day and Emily knew it when she absentmindedly answered her cell phone without looking at the caller ID panel. She just flipped it open and there he was. It was Cary McConnell’s husky voice. Her heart plunged.
    “I thought you were avoiding me,” he said.
    “I’ve just been busy,” Emily lied.
    “I know. I saw you on the Spokane news” He paused. “Twice”
    There was an awkward beat of silence as Emily toyed with pretending that she had a bad cell and couldn’t hear him. She was more direct than that and as much as she was beginning to loathe Cary McConnell, he deserved to know the truth.
    “Yeah. Brian’s hooked up with Diane Sawyer and I’m stuck with Spokane TV talking to a reporter just out of communications school.” She tried to inject a friendly tone in her voice, but mostly Emily just wanted the call to be over. She knew what he was after. But she was too tired to be quick with an excuse as to why she had to cut the call short.
    “Are you busy tomorrow night?”
    Damn it, he asked.
    “Now isn’t a good time,” she said, wishing she’d been more direct and used “never is a good time.”
    “We have something, you know.”
    She found her footing. “No, Cary, we don’t. We dated. It didn’t work out. And now the best we can be is good friends.”
    “We’re not friends. Last time 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