The Silenced

The Silenced by Heather Graham Read Free Book Online Page B

Book: The Silenced by Heather Graham Read Free Book Online
Authors: Heather Graham
she’d informed him she wouldn’t bother him again.
    Adam must have more agents, many more! Why did she have to work with this one?
    She’d deal with it. She had to.
    The important thing was that now she didn’t have to drive herself insane wondering and worrying about Lara—and end up looking like the worst agent ever after doing so well. She would’ve spent all her time obsessing over Lara’s fate, her whereabouts, when she should’ve been giving her all to the new job. But now Lara
was
her new job.
    Was it better to know the fate of a loved one? People always said it was. And yet it could also mean the end of hope.
    Years ago, knowing that Mary Elizabeth was dead hadn’t eased the pain of her loss.
    But perhaps seeing justice done did create what they called closure. Her aunt had known that her daughter’s suffering was over. That her killer was locked away. Actually, he wasn’t locked away anymore. He’d been killed in a prison brawl.
    Her aunt had told her that the killer’s death shouldn’t have made anything better for her. But it had. Christian or not, she’d said, it had brought her some resolution. She hoped he’d suffered.
    And now...
    Now Lara was missing, after leaving a cryptic message.
    Maybe she’d gone into deep hiding. But if she had, she’d done it for a reason. And the only way to find Lara was to find out what that reason could be.
    Meg sat up, considering the possibilities, trying to sort out where Lara could be. Probably not in Richmond, or at least not at her aunt’s house. But Lara had a small house in Harpers Ferry, left to her by her parents when they’d passed away. She and Lara had often visited during their college years, both in love with hiking and tubing on the river. They hadn’t been in quite a while; she didn’t think Lara had been out there recently, but she’d hired a service to handle maintenance and security, and she even rented it out now and then.
    Maybe she was there. It was a direction to pursue, at any rate.
    After a minute, Meg rose and walked into the bathroom. Time to get ready for bed.
    She liked to shower first thing in the morning. It seemed to start the day right, really wake her up. But since she’d begun training, she’d discovered she needed a night shower, too—in order to be able to sleep.
    Tonight, the odor of the morgue seemed to linger on her. She didn’t just want a shower to sleep, she
needed
one.
    She took a long shower, with very hot water and lots of soap and shampoo.
    Wrapped in a towel, she got out her toothbrush and toothpaste. The mirror was heavily fogged, and she wiped it with the edge of her big beach towel.
    She looked thin, she noted. Thin and haggard. Well, nothing she could do about that right now.
    She studiously brushed her teeth, glanced in the mirror again—and froze.
    The mirror was misty once more and yet she could see her own face. And another. Behind her.
    Lara’s face.
    Lara’s mouth worked; her eyes seemed filled with pain. No audible words came to her lips, and seconds later she began to fade away. And yet Meg thought she knew what Lara had tried to say.
    Not
help me
, but
find me
.
Find my remains.
    Meg whirled around just in time to see the last vestige of her friend disappear into the soft swirl of fog left by her very hot shower.
    * * *
    “I met Margaret when she was a child,” Adam was saying to Matt. “The Krewe didn’t exist back then, but local law enforcement in West Virginia called me in. They knew I could find the right people to help us discover the truth. I was also friends with an agent working kidnapping cases for the FBI.” He sat behind his desk, a cup of coffee in front of him, his hands folded on the desk. He raised them as he said, “There was hope that it was a ransom case, that the missing girl would come home. But her little cousin knew. She told me, although she wouldn’t tell anyone else, that she saw Mary Elizabeth sitting at the foot of her bed. She was gone, Meg told me, and

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