Off Limits by Haley James Read Free Book Online Page B

shoots
Melissa a sympathetic look. “You have to stop, Mel, you just have to stop,
people are starting to talk.”
    She takes a step back and crosses her
arms across her chest. “Well, I don’t care what people say.”
    “I know you don’t,” Mitch stands up from
his chair, revealing his 6’2 frame and walks around his desk so he’s facing
her, “but the sheriff does.”
    “Well, maybe, if the sheriff was a little
less concerned with what people thought and more concerned with justice my
sister’s memory would have a little peace.”
    The comment tugs on Mitch’s heart just a
little bit, and he can’t help but to feel bad for the woman. I mean, here she
was, after all this time still messed up from that morning so long ago. And the
worst part was that there was nothing he could do about it. He had been trying
to put the pieces together for a year now, but every lead seemed to be a dead
end.    
    “What do you have here, anyway?” he asks
her tearing his eyes away from hers and back toward his desk.
    Melissa’s eyes light up and for a second
she looks hopeful again. “He has another piece of land, Mitch! Upstate! One he
never told the police about in the initial investigation! Why wouldn’t he tell
us? I mean you…why wouldn’t he tell you if he had nothing to hide…”
    Mitch eyes scan the paper in front of him
and he frowns, “this isn’t his land, it’s his brothers land, probably a
vacation home, or something for his family.”
    “Or,” Melissa says waving her arms around
as she talks, “he put it in his brothers name to get us off his track, who
knows what he’s hiding up there! This could be the brake we have been waiting
for! I figured me and you could take a drive up there tonight after dark
and—“
    “Whoa, whoa, slow down there, Nancy Drew,”
Mitch says cutting her off. “First of all me and you aren’t driving anywhere,
that would be against the law without a search warrant.”
    “So get one,” Melissa says rolling her
eyes, like she’s talking to a two year old, “isn’t that what police officers
do?”
    “No, it’s not what we do, we need
probable cause, and we have none. His brother owning a house upstate doesn’t
prove Charles Morgan is hiding anything, just like him having a sexual
relationship with your sister doesn’t prove he killed her.”
    “He wasn’t having a sexual relationship
with her! He was stalking her! Following her all around! How many times do I
have to tell you before you get it!”
    “Not according to him,” Mitch says
slowly.
    Melissa snatches one of the papers out of
Mitch’s hand and laughs sarcastically. “Forget it. I should have known better
than to come to you. You don’t take anything I say seriously.”
    Mitch rubs his temples with his hand and
sits down in the chair in front of his desk. “Melissa you’re acting unreasonable
again. Now like I told you last time, you can’t just go around making up
evidence…”
    “Oh, don’t you dare! This isn’t high
school anymore, Mitch. I don’t have to listen to you! You aren’t the captain of
the football team and everyone’s hero, you might have had me star-struck back
then but not anymore! I’ve grown up and you’re a police officer now so I
suggest you start acting like it.”
    “Star-struck?” Mitch says allowing an
amused expression to come across his face.
    “Ugh! Just forget it!” She throws her hands
up in the air and snatches her papers up off his desk in one swift moment,
marching toward the door.
    “You have to stop, there’s going to be
consequences to your actions soon, Melissa, I can only do so much.”
    “I won’t stop,” the small woman says as
she opens the door, “until the man who killed my sister is off the street.”
Then she lets the door swing shut behind her leaving Mitch alone once again.

 
 
 
 
 
    Chapter Two
     
    Melissa walks through the front door to
her small red house, throwing her keys across the breezeway and letting them
land