LITMIR.BIZ

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when they hired me. And how often do you get two violent-crime victims in one day?”

      “Recently? More often than I like,” she answered drily. “But, understood, sir. We’re spread thin by this case already.”

      “Call me at this number if you need me.” Ending the call, he looked at the round-faced clock on the waiting-room wall. After five already. But still thirty minutes before he could go to Janelle Hanvey’s hospital room and ask the questions drumming a restless rhythm in his brain.

      Patience, he feared, was not one of his virtues.

      * * *

      “WHATABOUT MISSYand Joy? Where are they?”

      Laney squeezed her sister’s hand gently. “I don’t know, sweetie.” She kept herself from exchanging looks with her mother, knowing that Janelle was bright enough to see the tension between them, even in her concussed state. “How about you? Head still hurting?”

      Janelle smiled a loopy smile. “Not so much. The doctor said they stuck me with a local anesthetic, so the wound won’t be bothering me for a while.”

      “Good.”

      Janelle drifted off for a few minutes, just long enough for Laney to give her mother a look of relief. Then she stirred again and asked, for the third time since Laney had entered the room, “Laney, where are Missy and Joy?”

      She squeezed Janelle’s hand again and repeated, “I don’t know, sweetie.”

      There was a knock on the hospital-room door. Laney’s mother went to answer it. She came back and touched Laney’s shoulder. “Chief Massey would like to talk to you outside.”

      She traded places with her mother and opened the hospital-room door to find Doyle Massey leaning against the corridor wall. He didn’t change position when he saw her, just turned his head and flashed her a toothy smile. “How’s your sister doin’?”

      Damn, but he could turn on the charm when he wanted to. “As well as can be expected, I think. She’s still repeating herself a lot, but the doctor said that should pass soon.”

      “Has she said anything about what happened up there?”

      Laney shook her head. “But she keeps asking about her friends. All we’ve told her so far is that we don’t know where they are.”

      Doyle pushed away from the wall, turning to face her. He touched her arm lightly. “The coroner’s picked up Missy Adderly’s body and called in the state lab to conduct the postmortem.”

      “Has the family been contacted?”

      “My assistant said Craig Bolen left to meet with them about forty-five minutes ago. So I’m sure they know by now.”

      She shook her head, feeling sick. “Those poor people.”

      His gaze slid toward the door of her sister’s hospital room. “She has a plate in her head?”

      “Car accident when she was ten. It was bad.” Laney tugged her sweater more tightly around her, as if she could ward off the memories as easily as she could thwart a chill. But she couldn’t, of course. The memories of those terrible days would never go away. “The accident killed our brother.” She released a long sigh.

      “I’m sorry.”

      She looked up at him, seeing real sympathy in his eyes, not just the perfunctory kind. “I was a sophomore in college. I skipped a couple of semesters so I could come back home and help my mom deal with everything. Our dad had passed away from cancer only a year earlier. And then, so suddenly, Bradley was dead and Jannie was just hanging on by a thread—”

      “Bradley was your brother?”

      She nodded. “He was seventeen. Jannie had a softball game and Mama was working, so Bradley said he’d take her. He was a good driver. The police say there wasn’t anything he could have done. The other driver was wasted, slammed right through an intersection and T-boned Bradley’s truck. He was killed instantly, and Jannie had a depressed skull fracture. She had to relearn everything. Put her behind in school.”

      “How far behind?”

      “Three years. Jannie’s twenty. But she’s only seventeen in terms of her maturity and mental age. There were a few years when we didn’t think she’d ever get that far, but the doctors say she should develop normally enough from here on.” She glanced back at the closed door. “Unless this sets her back even more.”

      “How does she seem?”

      “Like herself,” Laney admitted. “A little disoriented, but normal enough.”

      Doyle touched her arm again. It seemed to be a habit with him, a way to connect to the person he was talking to. Unfortunately, it seemed to be having a completely disarming effect on her. She’d just told him more about her family than she’d told anyone in ages, including the people she’d worked with now for almost five years.

      Maybe he was a better cop than she had realized.

      “You think it’s okay for me to go in there and talk to your sister now?” His hand made one more light sweep down her arm before dropping to his side.

      “I think so. They’re not giving her anything like a sedative—they don’t want her to sleep much while they’re observing her for the concussion.”

      He looked toward the door. “Did the doctors tell you whether or not it would be okay to tell her the truth about Missy Adderly?”

      Laney recoiled at the thought. “They didn’t say, but—”

      “I know you want to protect her, especially now. And if we didn’t have a missing girl out there somewhere—”

      “I know.” She’d experienced only an hour’s worth of sick worry about her sister’s whereabouts. The Adderlys were still in that hell, made worse by knowing that one of their girls was dead. “Okay. But I want to be in there with you when you talk to her. I’m pretty sure my mother will want to be there, too.”

      “Fine. But you have to let me ask her the hard questions. You know we’re working with a ticking clock.”

      She knew. If there was any chance Joy Adderly was still alive, time was critical.

      Her sister was awake when they entered the hospital room. Laney introduced Doyle to Janelle, explaining he was there to ask her some questions. Her mother looked worried, but Janelle looked almost relieved. “Do you know where Joy and Missy are?”

      Doyle pulled up the chair Laney had vacated, getting down to Janelle’s eye level. “I know where Missy is, but it’s bad news.”

      Janelle’s eyes struggled to focus on his face. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

      “I’m sorry. We found Missy this morning, shortly before we found you.”

      Her eyes filled with tears. “Was she shot like I was?”

      He nodded, his expression gentle with compassion and something else, some dark, private sadness hovering behind his green eyes.

      Only the sound of Janelle’s soft sniffles dragged Laney’s gaze away from the sudden mystery the new chief posed. Laney grabbed a couple of tissues from the box the hospital supplied and handed them to her sister. Janelle wiped her eyes and cleared her throat. “What about Joy?”

      “We haven’t found Joy yet.”

      “You think she’s alive?” Hope trembled in Janelle’s soft voice.

      “We hope she is,” he answered. “We’re looking for her. We have searchers up on the mountain right now.”

      “I wish I could remember.” Janelle put her hand to her head. “It’s like I have bubbles in my head that keep popping and fizzing. It’s all I can hear or see.”

      Laney crossed to her sister’s side

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