Nowhere Safe by Nancy Bush Read Free Book Online Page B

had seen a shadowy figure running away, there had been no clues to whoever had set the fire, and therefore there was no knowing what the motivation was. Braden had made a fortune over the years in various financial deals and had earned himself enemies by the truckload, but was that behind who had started the fire? Someone who wanted payback? Or, was it the work of vandals? One of the ever-evolving group of disenchanted teenagers who seemed to bump from tire slashing to petty theft to vandalizing—and now maybe to arson?
    Though, like her sister, July, September felt Stefan Harmak might be capable of anything, there was nothing to link him to the crime other than rampant speculation. He certainly could hold a grudge against Rosamund for usurping his and his mother’s place at the house, but for all his character flaws, Stefan was more a griper than a doer, as far as September could see.
    “If I learn anything you’ll be the first to know, I promise,” September told her father, who grunted an assent, then asked her a few questions about Auggie. September parried her father’s probing remarks. Auggie was hard to get hold of at the best of times and damn near impossible for Braden as he actively tried to dodge his father. Finally, realizing he wasn’t going to get anything further from her, Braden said good-bye and September clicked off with a sigh of relief.
    “More family,” Wes said.
    “More family,” September agreed.
    Foxglove Park wasn’t that far from the field where the body of another young woman had been discovered the summer before, September realized as they drove past. The Do Unto Others Killer had left the body of Emmy Decatur in a field about a half a mile west. September recalled meeting with the press—the scoop-monger, television reporter, Pauline Kirby—and going on camera at the site to try and keep the public calm and informed about the depraved serial killer whose MO included carving words into his victims’ torsos, strangling them, and leaving their bodies in open fields. Looking out the passenger side window toward the field now, she thought about the man whose obsession with her had been a trigger to those killings, whose knife had been driven into her shoulder, a slice meant for her throat. She was lucky to be alive.
    “Someone walk on your grave?” Wes said as she involuntarily shivered.
    “Do you sometimes think about the guy who shot you?”
    He thought about her question, but then slowly wagged his head from side to side. “Bullet caught my hip bone. Doctors took it out but had to scrape the bone to do it. When I move too fast, it jabs me, but the bastard who did it’s in jail. That’s what I think about.” Wes turned onto a smaller road. “Here we are.”
    Although it was designated a park, Foxglove was actually a wetlands, an area designated by the city as a refuge for wildlife, a place adopted by some concerned citizens and glorified with its own name but little else to define it as a park. There were no paths or benches or water fountains. It was a shallow depression with cattails and dank maple leaves floating in shallow pools of water invaded by an overall scent of rot. The kind of place environmentalists love and germaphobes abhor.
    There were already several cars parked alongside the road. Some lookie-loos and what appeared to be the bicyclist who’d apparently found the body, the uniform standing next to him. As Wes pulled to a stop they looked back to see the crime scene van heading toward them down the two-lane rural road, and behind it, the coroner.
    The uniform introduced himself as Hadley and then said, “This is Mr. Morland,” indicating the cyclist.
    “I come by here every day,” Morland said as soon as September and Wes introduced themselves. “Every day. Sometimes I walk into the park, if it’s dry out. Thought it might be dry enough today and so . . .” He shook his head.
    September looked past him to a spot where a flash of white showed on the soggy