Then You Hide by Roxanne St. Claire Read Free Book Online Page B

easy to be the one who has to tell the sheila the truth.”
    “ Maybe a murderess,” Jack said, the only word of Fletch’s speech he’d really heard. “When you dig into the past like I’ve been doing for a few months, the inconsistencies in that trial are jaw-dropping. It might have been thirty years ago, but the system of jurisprudence hasn’t changed that much. Eileen Stafford didn’t get a fair trial.”
    “Then why did she accept it?” Adrien leaned back in the plastic chair and crossed brawny arms. “Why didn’t she take the stand? Her fingerprints weren’t on the weapon, but someone’s were—someone they never identified. She had no gunshot residue on her clothes, and her motive was downright piss-poor. So why didn’t she mount a defense?”
    Jack picked up the cup, then put it down again. He’d give his right ball for a beer, but Fletch, being the self-appointed sobriety police and the son of a gutter drunk, would put a stop to that.
    “Ever since I interviewed her for another case and got caught up in this one, she’s said the same thing over and over. ‘He can do anything.’”
    “And you take that to mean what?”
    “That there is someone in the world who terrifies Eileen Stafford.”
    “The woman’s in a coma, knocking hard on death’s door. I doubt she’s terrified of anyone right now.”
    That’s where Fletch was wrong. In the last few months, he’d talked a helluva lot to Eileen, and two things were consistent. She was scared of someone, and she wouldn’t say who had fathered the babies.
    “That’s what I want to know the most,” he said, half thinking out loud. “Who is the father of those three?”
    “Don’t get your hopes up, mate,” Fletch said. “That farmhouse on Sapphire Trail had a lousy filing system, and Lucy’s investigation machine is mighty. There is absolutely no record of who their father is.”
    Jack had been a Bullet Catcher long enough to know Lucy Sharpe’s everything was mighty. It was one of the things he missed most about the job. One of many.
    “There might be a record,” Jack said.
    Fletch shook his head. “Trust me, while you’ve been off trying to find Miranda’s sisters, she and I have been looking for any records. She wants to know who her father is, too.”
    Jack looked hard at his friend, considering just how much of his hand he could show. He trusted Fletch, but could he trust him not to tell Miranda? Or, worse, Lucy?
    He had to. “I think,” he said, leaning forward and lowering his voice, “I think the answer might be in the tattoos.”
    Fletch’s amber eyes were full of doubt as he waited for Jack to elaborate.
    “But I have to see the other tattoos before I can be certain or formulate some kind of theory,” Jack said.
    “We will. Wade will get Vanessa. Lucy says he’s very good.”
    Jack snorted. “If you ask me, he just failed his Bullet Catchers test.”
    “I didn’t ask you. Go on about the tats. Is this something Eileen said to you or just conjecture?”
    “Nothing she’s said outright and plenty of conjecture. After I saw Miranda’s tattoo, I dug through every court record and newspaper clipping from Wanda Sloane’s murder, looking for someone or something with a connection to the letters HI .”
    Fletch’s eyebrows lifted with interest. “You think the tattoos are initials? That’s brilliant, mate. Isn’t there anyone from back then that you can talk to? What about the cop who arrested her? You talked to him, right? Did you tell him this theory?”
    Willie Gilbert was the last person Jack would confide in. “I was a cop, and I was damn good at sniffing rat droppings. Willie Gilbert’s no good.”
    “He’s retired.”
    “Yeah, and he lives better than any retired cop I ever knew. He ain’t golfing and living in a resort on his pension.”
    Fletch nodded, getting the implication.
    “I have a better source,” Jack continued. “Remember I found the nurse, Rebecca Aubry, who did the tattoos? She’s the