Rising Storm (MacKenzie Cove Romantic Suspense Book 1) by Edie James

Author:Edie James
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-02-02T13:00:00+00:00

20

SILENCE FILLED the squad car as Rollo drove his father and Alyssa and Viv back to the house. Loss seemed to suck in around them like the fog pouring back in from the horizon.

Everyone stared out their own window, avoiding eye contact. The news about the body had obviously shaken both Alyssa and Viv to the core. Rollo didn't mind admitting it hit him hard, too. On the battlefield, death came suddenly, with a horrific certainty that couldn't be denied, but this was so... agonizing.

The girl was only a distant memory to him, a smiling, energetic young woman. Going places, he would have said, if he'd had to describe her back then. Not that he could have said why. A year behind him and a year ahead of Alyssa and Viv, she didn't run in his circle, as he recalled, though he could barely even put a face to the name after all these years.

He ached for her parents, her siblings, and for all of her classmates. Fear bit him so hard he flinched. Wren was only a few years younger than the poor thing in that well. He clenched the wheel until his knuckles ached, not wanting to give in to the terror.

His father exhaled loudly, his attention fixed on the gnarled cypress trees lining the road. "These are the hard ones."

"Yeah," Rollo replied, biting off the word as quickly as he could.

Most of his NCIS work had involved chasing domestic spies and tracking down corrupt officers. Sure, murder was involved. Lots of times. But not children. Not high schoolers primping for a date or sighing over a first kiss.

Not a girl his sister knew. A girl Wren might know if she were decades older.

He shot his father a quick glance. His dad was waiting for it, an unaccustomed sympathy cutting lines around the good side of his mouth.

Dad went through this.

The thought smashed him straight in the forehead. The old man worked every murder and disappearance on the Central Coast for decades. Kaitlyn Rudiger disappeared while he was in the middle of his career. His father had come through the door every night to his wife and children, carrying this same terror inside him.

The courage that must have taken.

He cleared his throat and stared out at the mist wrapping the trees in smoky white fingers. The realization humbled him. Dad had coped the only way he knew how. He nudged and urged and sometimes flat-out ordered his children to excel, to strive harder than everyone else. He must have figured that drive would save them.

Maybe it did.

No one should die like that. He pictured the pitiful plastic bags with their ragged pieces of her life. All he could do now was find her killer.

Restoring justice would have to be enough.

As if he heard Rollo's thoughts, his father thumped his cane on the floorboard. "We'll get him. We have to."

He didn't need to say the rest. Neither he nor Rollo could live with themselves if they didn't bring her justice.

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