LITMIR.BIZ

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tense.

      It hadn’t taken him long when they were in college to find out how her father controlled her life, from what she wore to the friends she had. Her one attempt at rebelling against her father’s authority had been when she’d told him she was going to marry Lucas. But that resolve hadn’t lasted very long. She and Lucas had had a fight over the fact that he wanted to wait until he’d finished his SEAL training before marrying her. Lucas had thought that they’d be able to work things out once he got back from basic training...but by then, she’d already married another man—one who had her father’s stamp of approval.

      Lucas closed the dishwasher, sat down at the kitchen table and pulled out his cell phone. He punched in the number for Scottie Murray, the computer whiz they used at the agency, and waited for him to answer. Lucas had no idea how Scottie could find even the deepest buried items on the internet with little effort. But then again, he didn’t ask. It was better if he didn’t know some of Scottie’s secrets.

      Scottie connected on the third ring. “Hello.”

      “Scottie, Lucas Knight here.”

      “Hey, man. What’s up?”

      “I have a new client. I need you to do some digging for me.”

      “Sure. What do you want?”

      “I want you to find me everything you can on a man named Kyle Lockhart and his wife, Mia. Lockhart was murdered about a month ago, and I need a full background search on him. Let me know the minute you find out anything.”

      “Okay, dude. You got it. I’ll get to work right away.”

      Lucas disconnected the call and sat at the table, thinking for a few minutes. If there was more to Mia’s story than what she was telling him, Scottie would find it. He glanced at the clock on the wall: 8:00 a.m. Scottie might not call back for several hours. That gave him time to take care of other things.

      He pulled out his cell phone and dialed Adam’s number. It went to voice mail right away. Without giving details, he left a short message that he wouldn’t be able to go to Nashville and would explain later. Then he headed to the shower.

      An hour later he walked back into the living room to check on Mia. She still lay there sound asleep but had pulled the cover up around her neck more. He watched her even breathing for a moment, before he turned and walked back to the kitchen.

      He’d just entered the room when his phone rang. He pulled the phone from his pocket and smiled at Scottie’s name on the screen.

      “Hey, Scottie. Did you find something for me?”

      “Yeah, I did. And some of it’s very interesting. This Lockhart guy was quite a character. I have everything in a file that I just emailed to you. There’s probably more, but I thought this would give you something to study while I keep digging into his life.”

      “Thanks, Scottie. Let me know when you have more.”

      As he disconnected the call, Lucas strode toward his office to turn on his computer. Within seconds he had opened his email and found the file Scottie had sent.

      Carefully, he began to read through the pages contained in the report. The first ones dealt with Kyle’s job at the import business. There was a job description, some evaluations filled out by the owner and some letters of commendation from community leaders.

      Those were followed by newspaper articles reporting Kyle’s important acquisitions and pictures of him at events, a wineglass in his hand, and surrounded by beautiful women, smiling for the cameras. As Lucas studied picture after picture, he discovered the same woman was in each one. The captions underneath identified her as Christine Abbott, heiress to her family’s hotel chain.

      Was it coincidence that Christine was in all the photos? He doubted it, but that was something Lucas could pursue later.

      He scrolled to the next page of the file. His eyes grew wide as a police report came into view. Lucas leaned closer to the computer screen and read, his stomach churning as he realized what he was looking at. A report of Kyle Lockhart’s arrest, six months before his death, for domestic abuse.

      Lucas’s fingers shook as he read the account. Teenagers having a party on the shore of the lake near Mia’s house had called the police to report hearing screams. The police had arrived to find Mia Lockhart severely injured. She had been transported to a hospital where it was determined she had a broken arm and several broken ribs, along with cuts and bruises over most of her face.

      Lucas scrolled down further and gasped aloud when a picture of a bruised and battered Mia appeared on the screen. He clamped his hand over his mouth to keep from crying out as he read that Mia had refused to press charges.

      Before he knew what he was doing, he had dialed Scottie’s number. He answered on the first ring.

      “Scottie, did you see the picture of Lockhart’s wife?”

      “Yeah, man. I saw it. But that’s just one of many.”

      “What do you mean by that?”

      “The investigating cop is a guy I know, so I called him and asked him about Lockhart. He said that everybody at the precinct knew Mia Lockhart was a victim of repeated domestic abuse. They tried to get her to press charges every time he put her in the hospital, but she never would. My friend said that’s the way victims are. Their abuser convinces them that they deserve what they’re getting. Most of them have nowhere else to go, so they stay. It’s sad, isn’t it?”

      Lucas’s breath hitched in his throat. “Yeah. Real sad. Thanks, Scottie.”

      For a few minutes after disconnecting the call Lucas sat still and thought about what he’d discovered. No wonder Mia had no one to turn to. She’d been the victim of the one person who was supposed to take care of her.

      He stood and walked back into the living room where she still lay sleeping. She moaned and clenched her fingers around the top of the afghan as she pulled it tighter around her neck. “No,” she murmured as her body twitched. “I’m sorry.”

      He had no idea what she was dreaming, but he knew for a certainty now that her life had been a nightmare. And when her husband was killed, she’d ended up in a new nightmare, threatened and eventually assaulted by the man who’d murdered Kyle. She had come to him for help, and he would do everything he could to find the man who’d terrorized her for the past few weeks.

      As for Kyle Lockhart, there was nothing Lucas could do about him now. But just maybe he could bring some closure to Mia for what she had experienced at her husband’s hands. If he could do that, maybe he, too, could at last put some closure to the most painful period of his life.

      * * *

      Mia slowly opened her eyes and stretched her arms over her head. She didn’t know when she’d slept so soundly. Her fingers brushed against the soft yarn at her neck, and she looked down at the afghan covering her from her shoulders to her toes. She trailed her fingers down the crocheted diagonal lines of muted shades of green, brown and gray that blended in with the earthy tones of Lucas’s house. Her eyes flew open wide at the thought of his name.

      Lucas! She was in his house. Asleep on his sofa.

      “Are you finally awake?”

      His voice came from the direction to her left. She bolted upright on the sofa and jerked her head around to stare at him. The sun shone through the window behind him and cast shadows across the chair where he sat. He had his ankle propped on the opposite leg and sat there staring at her, the expression on his face unreadable.

      She clutched the afghan tighter around her neck and swallowed. “Lucas. You scared me.”

      His hands clenched around the arms of the chair, but he didn’t rise. “Did I? I’m sorry. I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to wake up.”

      She swiveled her body around until her feet were on the floor, and she sat facing him. “I guess I was more tired than I thought. I’m sorry if I inconvenienced

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