Without a Trace by Danielle Steel

Author:Danielle Steel [Steel, Danielle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2023-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Aude looked like she was going to faint when she saw the dead animals on her doorstep. Charlie told her to go back inside, disposed of them in the forest nearby, then came back to wash his hands and talk to her. She was waiting in the kitchen, at the table, her legs too shaky to hold her.

“Is that usual at this time of year too?” The skinned rabbit was the most disturbing. Aude shook her head in answer.

“I don’t think so. Maybe the person shooting last night was drunk or crazy. No one’s ever done that before,” she admitted.

“I’m going to tell the police, or maybe you should.” His situation without proper ID papers was sketchy, and he didn’t want to draw attention to himself, or have to explain why he didn’t have any, since he was presumed to be dead and wanted to stay that way. He had taken to using part of her last name locally, calling himself Charles Martin. No one had questioned him so far, and beyond her community, people who didn’t know them assumed that they were married when they saw them together. They looked like any other ordinary couple, despite the seventeen-year difference in their ages. Charlie was still wearing his wedding ring out of habit, and looked youthful enough for their being together to seem reasonable. “I suppose I shouldn’t go to the police myself,” he reconsidered, and she looked at him with worried eyes, although there was color in her face again. “Do you know who might have left the dead animals on the doorstep?” As he sat across the kitchen table from her, he suddenly had the distinct impression that she did. He didn’t like the look on her face. She looked terrified, as though she’d seen a ghost. He hadn’t forgotten what she’d told him about her ex-husband. Plenty of people in Charlie’s previous life cheated on each other, even in his milieu, but they didn’t commit crimes like that. They just weren’t violent about it. “Could it have anything to do with your ex-husband?”

“I haven’t heard from him in eight years. He’s never tried to contact me since the divorce, and he still has several years to serve in prison, two more years, or longer. I know he can’t be out now. But he had a passion for guns, and he liked to hunt small animals with them, even as a boy. He told me so. And he liked to skin them. I saw him do it once and it was awful. It looked just like the rabbit on our doorstep this morning. He’s the only person I know who would do a thing like that. It was like a signature and a reminder to me that he’s still alive somewhere.”

“It could have been any boy or man in the neighborhood.” Charlie tried to reassure her. “If he’s still in prison, it wasn’t him,” he said calmly. “He’s not the first man to kill some squirrels and skin a rabbit.

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