Playing Dead by Allison Brennan Read Free Book Online Page B

student, that he’d moved cross-country and taken up medicine.
    For fifteen years she’d believed her father had killed her mother. And the guilt remained after all these years. That it was her phone call to her father about her mother’s affair that had started the time bomb that ended with two dead lovers and a man on death row.
    She might as well have pulled the trigger herself.
    Claire stifled a sob as she pulled in to a parking space in the UC Davis visitor parking lot ten minutes later. She slammed the Jeep into park and banged her head on the steering wheel as if that could force the memories from her mind and the stench of blood from her senses. If she hadn’t called her father to rat out her mother’s infidelity, her mother would be alive and her father would never have gone to prison. They might have divorced, they might have hated each other, but they would both still be in her life.
    When Oliver Maddox came to her to ask her to help with an appeal of her dad’s case, she rejected him immediately. She’d been at the trial. She’d walked into the house only minutes after her father killed two people. Maddox said, “There’s a chance your dad was framed. And I think I can prove it.”
    Was she willing to go through it all again on “a chance ”?
    She’d be lying to herself if she said Maddox’s visit hadn’t given her more than a few sleepless nights. What did he know? Why was he doing this? But when she found out he wasn’t working with the Western Innocence Project, was just a law student, she’d discounted everything he’d said. One more lying fraud in the world, why was she surprised?
    She banged her head one more time and wished she could just forget she’d seen her dad.
    He’d looked old. Sad. Defeated.
    She couldn’t be wrong about that day. She wasn’t wrong. She’d heard her mother and Chase Taverton alive having sex, called her father, and less than twenty minutes later walked in and they were dead. Who else could have gone into the house and killed them during that short time? Without her or her father seeing anyone? Without leaving any evidence?
    She’d been a coward. If she had walked in on them, her mother’s lover would have been long gone before her father came home. If Claire had had the courage to confront them herself, she’d never have had to call her dad.
    She jumped out of her Jeep and started across the UC Davis campus. She was a proud college dropout after three semesters. College hadn’t been one of Claire’s wisest choices. Not because she couldn’t make the grade—she’d dropped out with a 3.7 GPA—but because she’d hated college almost as much as she’d hated high school. The interpersonal drama irritated her and she tended to get into trouble because she shined the light on truths that people preferred to keep hidden. “Playing nice with others” had never been high on her to-do list. Why play nice when everyone lied?
    Five minutes later, after a brisk, head-clearing walk, she stepped into the main administrative office building and said to the secretary, “My name is Claire O’Brien and Oliver Maddox contacted me about an appeal he’s working on.”
    Everyone lied. Even she did. She was quite good at it when she was searching for the truth.
    The secretary’s eyes widened. “Recently?”
    “A few months ago.”
    Her face fell. “Oliver is no longer here.”
    “He transferred?”
    “No. He’s missing. No one knows where he went.”
    “When?”
    “End of January. I don’t know the exact date. His girlfriend filed a missing person report with both campus security and Davis police.”
    Oliver had been missing since January? Claire asked, “Do you know where I can find her?”
    The receptionist frowned. “We can’t give out private information.”
    “What about her name? I’m an alumna, I can get her contact information from the student directory.” She showed her Davis ID, glad she’d always kept it in her wallet.
    “Well, since