Hidden Fury by Marie Flanigan

Author:Marie Flanigan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, private detective
Publisher: Red Adept Publishing
Published: 2021-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

Thursday Evening

Preston walked back to meet Gunnar so that he could lead him to the church. Annie stayed on the front stoop, listening to spring insects call as the sun sank lower. It wouldn’t be long before dark. She thought about Mr. Nichols appearing with the shotgun and the chill that had come over her.

When she’d recovered sufficiently from the first time she’d gotten shot, she’d spent months talking with a therapist. Actually, she’d spent months with all sorts of therapists: physical therapists, occupational therapists, and a psychologist. Shouldn’t they be called mind therapists? She rubbed her eyes.

But the second time she’d gotten shot, she hadn’t gone back to see the psychologist. She’d learned grounding techniques to push back the trauma in order to function the first time, so she hadn’t felt like she’d needed to go over those again. Suddenly, she wasn’t so sure. She couldn’t freeze in situations like this—which she could face at work. Although it felt more like her cop job than her PI job. She thought wistfully of all the background checks she’d been doing. She didn’t miss dealing with bodies.

Annie took off the gloves and her jacket, sighed, and closed her eyes. She had a headache from pushing herself too hard for the last few days. Her doctors had cautioned her about getting too tired or stressed—or even a little dehydrated. Her brain didn’t handle any of those things well due to the trauma. Annie shook her head. She was all of those things at the moment.

Opening her eyes, she stood to get a bottle of water out of the tool bag Preston had brought. No reason she shouldn’t hydrate while she had the chance. As she sat drinking water, she noticed that on the other side of the church was a huge patch of purple flowers dotted here and there with daffodils. They seemed weirdly random in the undergrowth. She walked toward them and realized fieldstone markers were among the flowers and sunken places in the ground. The area was a graveyard.

Annie returned to the front stoop of the church to drink her water. She was surprised to hear someone coming through the woods. It seemed too soon for it to be Preston and Gunnar. Instead, a man came through the trees in front of her but not from the same path Mr. Nichols had taken. The man was a tall, lanky white guy, and he was carrying a gas can. He seemed familiar. When he saw Annie, he dropped the gas can and started to run.

“Hey!” she shouted and started after him, but she couldn’t run with any speed on a good day, and it wasn’t a good day.

She tripped and caught herself on a sapling. The guy was way ahead of her. Unwilling to risk hurting herself by trying to follow him through the trees in the gathering dark, she let him go.

Annie had just returned to the church when she heard the guys coming up the makeshift path. They crashed through the undergrowth, sounding like bears.

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