Finding Her Son by Robin Perini Read Free Book Online Page A

bending the rules a bit, but there are things I need to tell you, and—” he peered around the room “—we have an audience.”
    Emily looked about then turned to Mitch. “I’ve been watched more than enough in this police station. Follow me to my place. Let me show you what I’ve done. Maybe you’ll see something I haven’t.” She snagged a sticky note and pen from the top of his desk and scribbled her address. She handed him the yellow paper. “Just in case I lose you.”
    He took the slip but didn’t need the information. He’d memorized her address.
    Mitch didn’t like the sour taste success left in his mouth. Emily trusted him, and every word he spoke had a lie hidden behind it. He’d have to live with the consequences.
    As they passed the desk sergeant, one of his SWAT-mates, Reynolds, ran past. “Mitch. Wish you were back, man. We got a bad one at the Denver Federal Center.”
    Reynolds shoved through the doors to the SWAT Den, and Mitch could see the flurry of activity.
    “Okay, children. Mount up,” Lieutenant Decker, his SWAT commander, yelled.
    The steel door closed out the noise. Mitch’s knuckles whitened around the box handles. “I should be there.” But until Ghost was caught, he couldn’t let this case go…whether he was reinstated to SWAT or not. Emily was in danger, and he couldn’t turn his back on his responsibility to her.
    He felt the warmth of her hand on his arm.
    “You’ll get back to them,” she said. “Soon.”
    Was her concern real or had she recognized his desperation to return to SWAT? Was Tanner right? Was she a black widow? A beautiful, tempting black widow, but a dangerous predator nonetheless?
    God, he hoped not. They walked out together.
    After shoving the box in his SUV, Mitch followed her around winding curves to an isolated neighborhood that backed up against the Rocky Mountains. She slowed to fifteen miles below the speed limit when they reached the curve where the accident had occurred. A single white cross with a red wreath of poinsettias decorated the side of the road. He’d watched as she placed them there. Would she stop as she sometimes did?
    After slowly passing the spot, she sped up and took a few more turns to her house. A picket fence surrounded her ranch-style home. As she pulled into the driveway, Mitch frowned at the Priced to Sell sign in the front yard. That was new since this morning. So, money was as tight as Tanner believed.
    He grabbed the evidence box from the backseat and met her at the front door. “How long has it been on the market?”
    “Not long.”
    “You’re in a nice neighborhood. That should help it sell faster.”
    “I hope so,” Emily said. “Let’s go into the dining room.”
    They passed a kitchen, and Mitch noted a single cereal bowl and coffee cup on a drying towel. Nothing out of place. He glanced past a living room with a layer of dust on most of the wood surfaces. He hadn’t expected that. No magazines, no DVDs thrown about. The house didn’t really look lived in. He opened his mouth to pry as she slid open a walnut door. The words stuck in his throat when he entered the dining room.
    “Whoa.” The walls had been converted to murder boards. Articles, photographs, dates had been attached, connected with arrows and lines, and adorned with notes.
    Emily pointed to one side. “It’s a timeline of every event from the month before the hit-and-run until one month after. On the map, I’ve recorded every infant kidnapping in North America.”
    Mitch rounded the dining room table and stepped up to the dozens of photographs tacked across the country. “You have found written on all of them. None of these kids are still missing.”
    “Except Joshua.”
    “And the small d in the corner of the photo?”
    “Deceased,” she whispered.
    Her words had gone so soft he could barely hear her. She probably hadn’t been able to write the word. Either way, the letter became a stark reminder of the worst that could