Fatal Hearts by Norah Wilson Read Free Book Online Page B

open book .”
    “Now I’ve offended you.”
    She looked up to find him studying her, but he’d tamped down whatever that was she’d seen in his eyes.
    “Not at all,” she lied. “People do hold things back, tell each other white lies. It’s the social lubricant that makes the world go round, right?”
    “Right.”
    “He did mention that you weren’t as interested in finding your birth parents as he was.” Hayden picked up her beer mug again, more for something to do with her hands than because she wanted another sip. “He said you didn’t approve of the investigation.”
    Boyd stared hard at her. Ignoring her comment, he said, “So he didn’t tell you he thought he’d had a major break in the case? That he’d found the identity of our birth mother and was pretty sure he knew who our father was too?”
    “No.” She clumped the heavy mug back down on the table. “No, he didn’t. Is that speculation, or did he tell you that?”
    He rubbed at his temple again. “He sent me a series of text messages asking me to call, but my cell phone had run out of juice, and I’d forgotten my charger at home. So he left me a voice message saying he’d had a big break and thought he knew not only who our mother was but possibly our father. I didn’t get the message right away, or even the next morning. By the time I plugged in my phone, saw the texts, and called back, Josh was freshly dead.” A muscle leapt in his jaw. “When I couldn’t reach his cell, I tried to reach him at the paper. They told me he hadn’t come back from lunch. I tried him at Dr. Stratton’s, but they hadn’t seen him since breakfast. I made a mental note to try his cell again in an hour or two, but before I could, Sergeant Quigley called me with the news.”
    “I’m so sorry.” Hayden forced the husky words through a throat tightened to the point of pain. “That must have been horrible.”
    He dragged a hand across his face. “It was a complete shock. I mean, when he worked at the bigger papers and was still building his reputation, he’d been involved in a handful of dangerous investigations over the years. Biker gangs, political corruption, corporate wrongdoing. Any one of those investigations could have gotten him killed if he put a foot wrong. But with him in Fredericton, covering small-town news and searching for our birth parents, I thought he was safe for once. Compared to his other assignments, searching for our biological parents didn’t even register on the danger meter. I just . . . I wasn’t prepared to hear that he’d died. If only I’d been home when he called, maybe things would have been different.”
    Her hands tightened around the cool mug as she realized what he was saying. He’d intimated before that he thought Josh had stirred up a hornet’s nest, but she’d somehow assumed it was a work-related investigation. “You think he was killed over the investigation of your birth parents?”
    “I don’t know what to think. All I know is that he’s now gone, before his time, and I’m here trying to piece together how in the hell it could have happened.”
    “Did he give you a name? Tell you what the big break was?”
    His laugh broke. “Of course not. This is Josh we’re talking about. He just gave me the teaser. He was saving the full story for when I called back. But he never got a chance.”
    Hayden heard the self-blame in his voice. She wondered what had kept him away from home overnight. Work? Or a woman? The latter thought came complete with visuals, shockingly vivid in their details. She shook them away.
    “You said you were going to meet with the police when you left the hospital earlier,” she said. “Did you learn anything more? Are they closer to knowing the cause of death?”
    “Unfortunately not. I already knew the pathologist found nothing untoward on the autopsy—no anatomical evidence of a heart problem—and that the standard hospital tox screen showed nothing. The forensic toxicology