Wicked Game by Lisa Jackson, Nancy Bush Read Free Book Online Page B

mother had read the remarks aloud in the old kitchen, some twenty-five years earlier.
    Tonight, as he ran past, the willow was devoid of leaves and the owl moved to better shelter, flying through the open hay loft window to his perch high in the rafters of the barn, a structure that had been in the Walker family for over a hundred years. Hudson passed the tree and another memory sizzled through his brain, one filled with heat and passion and only the slightest worry that he and Becca would get caught making love beneath the lush, drooping branches and canopy of fluttering leaves. God, he’d had it bad for her.
    Maybe worse than you had it for Jessie?
    He hurried up the back walk and onto the porch, shaking drops from his hair, as a cloudburst released more slanting rain that battered the old shingles of the roof and gurgled down the gutters. He didn’t want to think about Jessie and hoped to hell that those bones found at the school weren’t hers, that she was living somewhere far away and was still as intriguing and mysterious as she’d always been.
    But his gut told him differently.
    He stepped into the house and it felt oddly empty tonight, more so than it had before.
    “All in your head,” he told himself as he hung his jacket on a peg in the mudroom, kicked off his boots, and in stocking feet, stepped onto the worn linoleum he swore he’d replace this summer, along with the roof and changes to the bathrooms and this old kitchen. The house was starting to look worn. Tired-looking. The same as it had been for the past thirty years. His parents had “updated” it in the early seventies, and now it needed a full remodel.
    Spying the phone, he remembered his short call with Becca, how the sound of her voice had taken him back in time to that summer after his first year at Oregon State. Man, he’d been horny and she, well…his groin tightened at the thought of their affair. “Too hot to handle,” he said aloud and reached into the refrigerator for a beer.
    Funny, when Renee had insisted “the old gang” get together and had finally convinced Hudson that she was going to arrange a meeting whether he liked it or not, he’d offered to call Becca. Not Zeke, nor Mitch, nor Glenn, just Becca. And Renee had known that Becca would be the lure. Her eyes had actually lit with smug satisfaction when he’d reluctantly agreed and offered to call her.
    “I bet Tamara has her number,” Renee said, tossing him her cell phone, Tamara Pitts’s name and number listed on her display. “Give her a call.”
    She hadn’t added I dare you , but it had been there just the same. They both knew it, and no, it wasn’t a twin thing. Renee just knew how to manipulate people. “She’s not married, you know, her husband died last year and get this, he left not only a widow, but a girlfriend to boot, a pregnant girlfriend. Becca didn’t even have time to divorce the bastard before he kicked off. A real gem, that Ben Sutcliff.”
    He didn’t ask how she’d known all the dirt on Becca’s husband. Renee didn’t explain. It was part of her nature, what she liked to call “reporter’s instincts,” but Hudson thought it had more to do with being a snoop and a busybody.
    “So, call her. See if the widow can make it,” Renee said, her lips curling knowingly. “You know what, you never really got over her. Or Jessie. I’d call that pathetic, but considering my current marital state, that would be a little hypocritical.” She hadn’t elaborated and Hudson knew better than to prod. As far as he was concerned, Renee’s husband, Tim, was useless. But then he’d always thought so.
    “I just wonder, if that skeleton does happen to be Jessie’s, what the hell happened to her?”
    Hudson hadn’t let his mind travel down that dark and twisted road. He’d always assumed Jessie was alive; that she’d just taken off. Again.
    He hoped he was right.
    “I’ll call her later,” he’d said, writing down Tamara’s number. He wasn’t