White Hot by Sandra Brown Read Free Book Online

from him. “I’m grateful that at least he’s finally escaped them. I hope he’s found peace. But I’d like to know—”
    She stopped abruptly when he raised his hand to her cheek and brushed it with the back of his fingers. Startled into silence, she gaped at him.
    “Mosquito.”
    “Oh.” She touched her cheek where his fingers had been. “Thank you.”
    “You’re welcome.”
    Seconds ticked past before she refocused on the subject. “I’d like to know how Danny died. Give me the details.”
    “I would have told you everything on Sunday. I made several calls to your office. You wouldn’t talk to me.”
    “I wasn’t prepared to hear about it then.”
    That wasn’t the reason she had refused to speak with him and he knew it. Nevertheless he didn’t dispute her. Instead, he said quietly, “He was killed by one gunshot to the head. There was no…Well, he wouldn’t have felt a thing. Death would have been instantaneous.”
    She could do without any more description than that. That was bad enough. “Who found him?”
    “Fishermen on the bayou. Their outboard had started smoking. They stopped at the fishing camp to see if they could borrow some oil. Danny’s car was parked out front, so they assumed someone was there. When they went inside the cabin, they found him.”
    She tried not to think about the scene that would have greeted the fishermen. “It was ruled a suicide.”
    “Initially.”
    “But Red Harper is having second thoughts?”
    “Not Red. There’s a new detective in his department, a younger man named Wayne Scott. Red assigned him to investigate the scene. He thought it would be routine. A form to be filled out, rubber-stamped, and filed. End of case and Danny becomes a statistic. But Scott came back from the fishing camp with more questions than answers.”
    “Such as? Does he think it could have been an accident?”
    “He’s not sure. As I said, he has more questions than—”
    “You’re hedging, Mr. Merchant,” she said impatiently. “I’m a grown-up. Don’t talk down to me.”
    “Deputy Scott hasn’t revealed his hand to me. I swear it,” he said when she looked at him skeptically. “I just have a gut feeling that he’s not one hundred percent convinced that the coroner’s ruling is correct.”
    He leaned against the tree trunk behind him, bending one knee and planting that foot flat against the bark. He turned his head away from her to gaze out across the channel and reflexively whisked away a bead of sweat that was trickling down his temple.
    He said, “For a brief time, before I realized that criminal law was not my forte, I worked in a prosecutor’s office. From that experience, I learned how cops think. And the first thing they always think is foul play. They rule that out first.
    “I don’t know Wayne Scott or what makes him tick. I don’t know how adept he is at investigating crime scenes, or how much experience and training he’s had. I only met him on Sunday evening when he and Red came to the house with the news. He looks wet behind the ears, but strikes me as being eager and aggressive.
    “Maybe he’s just trying to play the big shot or impress his new boss. Maybe he’s looking for clues to support the theory that Danny didn’t take his own life simply because that would make for a juicier investigation.”
    Sayre had listened carefully, read his body language, and realized where he was going with this verbal meandering. She also understood his reluctance to say it outright, because the alternative to a suicide or accidental death was unthinkable.
    “Are you saying that this detective thinks Danny was murdered?”
    His gaze moved back to her. “He hasn’t said that directly.”
    “Why else would he be looking for clues and asking questions?”
    He shrugged. “He’s new in town. He’s been on the job only a few weeks. He doesn’t know—”
    “He doesn’t know that his boss takes graft from my family and then looks the other way whenever