No Hero by Mallory Kane Read Free Book Online Page B

over the slanderous comments. But instead, he’d stomped his feet like a child throwing a tantrum and walked out.
    Ah well, yet another supposed good guy with feet of clay. Reghan had seen her share of powerful, heroic men who seemed to be made of steel but who had built their reputations on foundations so shaky, they would wash away with the first rain.
    Barely three minutes after closing her front door, she was in the shower. It felt wonderful to let the pounding spray massage her tense, aching muscles and clear her mind.
    The entire day had been a reinforcement of her belief that heroes were an extinct species. Where were the people who, when the going got tough, came through for you instead of running away? That was the eternal question.
    Where were the heroes?
    Reghan had a very firm grasp on the answer to that question. There weren’t any. Her father had always been her hero. He’d called her his princess and showered her with love and attention. But when she was eleven, he’d left, with nothing more than a quick kiss good-bye. All her mother ever told her was that he’d gotten tired of being married. But Reghan’s young heart had known the truth. Her daddy, her hero, had stopped loving her. It had taken her years to learn to trust again.
    When she’d finally found the man she wanted to live her life with and had started talking about marriage, he’d confessed that he had no intention of leaving his wife—whom she’d known nothing about.
    Heroes ? She didn’t think so.
    She shampooed and rinsed her hair, all pretense of clearing her mind gone. She was still back there at the crime scene, feeling powerless and impotent as Dev gave her the brush-off.
    He’d been right. She should have brought the DVD with her. It was a testament to how tired she was, and how spooked she’d been about a second kid dying, that she’d watched the recording then walked out without it. Too bad. If she’d had it, she’d have thrown it in Detective Gautier’s arrogant face. He’d have probably let it drop to the ground and left it there.
    All day she’d expected a police officer to show up at her office asking for the disk, so she’d gotten a copy from the media lab just in case. But no one had materialized. It surprised her and, if she were truthful, ticked her off that Dev had dismissed her and her information so carelessly. No matter how he felt about her personally, she’d figured he was too good a detective to ignore a possible lead.
    Which in turn made her doubt her own confidence that Fontenot’s ravings actually contained the key to the murders. After the first boy’s death, after her informant, Annie the dispatcher, had mentioned he’d been a resident at Dev’s center, Reghan had played the DVD again and again, enough to convince herself that Fontenot’s words were fraught with threats. But unless someone had been in the room with the man and listened to every chilling word he’d said in that silky voice, it would have been close to impossible to believe that the wheelchair-bound lunatic on the disk was a real threat.
    A cold chill settled at the base of her spine. She needed to distract herself somehow—with something as far removed from the violent deaths of two teenage boys as she could get. Maybe she’d crawl into bed with a book or flip channels on the TV for an hour or so, then go to sleep. She wasn’t even hungry. She towel-dried her hair, pulled on a tank top and drawstring pajama pants, and headed downstairs to get some water—or better yet, a glass of wine.
    The instant she stepped off the bottom stair, a loud banging on her front door split the silence. She looked over her shoulder at the silhouette outlined through the beveled glass. The shadow looked familiar. Familiar and big and intimidating. A thrill of apprehension slid through her.
    Another sharp rap shook the glass in its frame. “Connor?” The voice rumbled through the door like summer thunder—deep, warm, ominous.
    It was Dev