Gone By Morning by Michele Weinstat Miller

Author:Michele Weinstat Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books

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At the Apple store on Fifth Avenue, across from the Plaza Hotel, a sweet young man—pimples and short hair except for a bun on top of his head—helped Kathleen download all her information from the cloud. She breathed a small sigh of relief. Her life was housed online as much as in her building.

Next, she sat in a Starbucks to order a Windows laptop. She looked around, hoping no one in the store was waiting for a chance to hack anyone stupid enough to do payment transactions on an unsecured network. There was a mom with a toddler. A tourist family, rosy cheeked and blond haired. She guessed they were from Idaho or Indiana. A couple of college kids studied in a corner. It was early in the day for nefarious hackers.

One thing she couldn’t get out of her mind, though, was the fire inspector telling her the fire hadn’t been an accident. From what she’d seen on the news over the years, mental illness or domestic violence revenge was often the precipitating factor when it came to arson in occupied buildings. She didn’t think any of her tenants were in that sort of fix, but one never knew.

Her mind returned to her visit with Wayne and his veiled threat. I don’t want to see something bad happen to you, he’d said. You’re screwing with the wrong people, Kat.

She felt a tightness in her chest as she brought the thought to full consciousness. Could Wayne have told someone she was asking about Sharon? Someone dangerous? Emily had thought cars were following her. Could Emily have told the wrong person that she was the only witness in Sharon’s murder investigation? Was there a connection between the cars and Wayne’s warning? And were both those things connected to the fire?

She chided herself for her fantastic imagination. If there were people who wanted to kill her or Emily, there were more efficient ways to do it than setting a fire.

She breathed in, filling her belly. She tried to breathe out her anxiety. She looked around, centering herself. She had to deal with insurance, police reports, finding a place to live, and buying clothes. It was odd how her mind could make an overwhelming situation worse by spinning conspiracy theories in her head, probably to avoid facing the real situation. No matter how unpleasant reality was, she refused to make it worse by entertaining paranoid suspicions. She scoffed at her musings: silly season.

She called her building manager, Greg, a sweet young man who seemed to know far more about building management than anyone could have learned during so few years of adult life. He’d once talked about a fire in another building he’d managed that had spread at lightning speed because the apartment doors didn’t automatically shut behind the residents when they fled. At his suggestion, Kathleen had agreed to install automatic latches on every apartment door, which meant they’d slammed shut when people fled the fire. So why had the fire

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