The Damaged One by Mimi Harper Read Free Book Online

who. Only the who mattered now.
    It was time to move on.

Chapter Ten
     
     
    He was still asleep when his phone rang the next morning. It was nearly dawn when he finally came limping back to the hotel and it took hours for his head to stop, for that inner voice to finally give him a break and shut up. So, he was asleep a little after noon when Foster finally got around to calling.
    “Sorry it took so long,” Foster mumbled in his familiar ass-kissing tone.
    “Whatcha got?” Augustus grunted.
    “I found the therapist. She lives in an industrial park between Houston and Katy.”
    “I know.”
    “She works for Magick Ads—”
    “I know that, too.”
    Foster hesitated. “Oh, well,” he finally said. “I, uh, talked to one of the cops in Denton again. He told me a few things about the investigation that was off the record.”
    Augustus rolled over, more interested in finding a comfortable position than what the investigator had to say. So far he hadn’t said anything Augustus hadn’t learned on his own.
    “Unless it has something to do with the dealer, I’m not really interested.”
    “Well,” Foster mumbled again. “I—that’s exactly what it’s about.”
    Augustus sat up. “What do you meant?”
    “The detective told me that they were interested in the dealer, too. There had been quite a few deaths in the few months leading up to Luck —” he caught himself and cleared his throat. “Around the time Jackie died,” he finished.
    “And?”
    “And they wanted to find the dealer to see if there was something in the drugs he was selling that was causing the overdoses. But no one would talk. And then the boyfriend puts this bug in their ears about the therapist.”
    “She’s not the dealer,” Augustus said, dismissing the idea even as it formed in his mind. “She’s too straight.”
    “No, they never thought that,” Foster agreed. “But when they were talking to her in their initial interviews, they noticed that she got fidgety every time they brought the subject up. This cop I talked to, he even noticed that she would start picking at her nails whenever they brought it up. That told him she knew something.”
    “She could have just been nervous.”
    “I said that,” Foster said. “When I was a cop, people would get nervous for all kinds of reasons during an interrogation and it rarely had anything to do with the subject at hand.”
    “So?” Augustus said, waving his had around as though Foster could see him and understand he wanted him to get to the point.
    “This cop waited for her in the parking lot outside the psych building one night. He’s a good-looking guy, though he might be able to flirt with her a little, trick her into admitting more than she was willing to give them at the station. And she did…a little.”
    “What does any of this have to do with the dealer?”
    “Because she knows.” Foster chuckled, as though the idea was highly amusing. “She actually fell for this guy’s charms and told him what a great girl Lucky was and how sad she was about what happened to her. But she insisted the dealer didn’t do anything to hurt her or anyone else. Insisted he wouldn’t do that.”
    Augustus felt ice water run through his veins for the second time in twelve hours.
    “She knows,” Foster repeated. “She knows who the dealer is.”

Chapter Eleven
     
     
    He was leaning against the hood of her Jeep when she came outside the next morning, two cups of coffee in his hands. He wasn’t sure how he would feel when he saw her again, but he hadn’t expected a fist to squeeze his heart or the light morning breeze to run off with his breath.
    She seemed relaxed in jeans and a fitted graphic tee. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, giving her an air of innocence. He thought he should go help her when she turned to slam the heavy door, but she had it closed before he could even push away from the car. And then she turned and her eyes fell on his.
    If he had expected her to be