Page 15 of The Woman Left Behind

Whatever.

“Hang in there, Lillian,” he bid.

I switched targets and narrowed my eyes at his eyes.

“Right,” he muttered, openly fighting a smile.

I watched him walk to the front door and I braced when he stopped at it and turned to me.

“I’m so sorry, honey,” he said.

He. Was. Killing. Me.

“Go away,” I returned.

“See you tomorrow,” he repeated.

“Whatever,” I replied, this time verbally.

He shot me another smile.

And then Handsome Harry Moran was gone.

FOUR

Sell His Soul

Harry

Harry’s thoughts were all over the place on his drive out to metaphorically bang his head against the wall at the Zowkower compound.

He should be going back to the station. Getting his shit tight. Re-reading that email from Coeur D’Alene. Re-assessing what little they knew about the bones they’d found in that grave on the side of that mountain.

But he didn’t because after meeting Lillian, it was now burned on his brain.

Man. Woman. Both in their mid to late forties.

Both died of gunshot wounds, and they knew that because they’d found the bullets in that hole with them, surmising they had once been in their bodies, along with bullets that had made the holes in the skulls.

He tried to rein it in, the varied directions his mind was leading him, but he could still feel Lillian’s grief wetting his shirt, and Harry knew all about grief.

So he was struggling.

He’d been in this business a long time. You get to know people, how they think, how they work, the fucked-up shit they get up to, the stupid mistakes they make, the depths of denial they could dig.

It didn’t take fifteen years in law enforcement to follow the trail of Dern dicking with Lillian’s parents, a clear frame-up happening with the Dietrichs (only for any investigation into that being mysteriously dropped when the Rainiers couldn’t be found), the Rainiers leaving town, and Lillian finding Willie, a good-looking bad guy with a way with the ladies, though he was the least of the trouble that was the mess of the Zowkowers.

But Harry had fifteen years of law enforcement and all of that tracked.

Something else tracked.

Something he didn’t want to think about, but something he couldn’t stop thinking about.

Twenty-five years he’d lived in that town with Lillian Rainier, and he’d never noticed her.

He was five years older than her, so he wouldn’t have run into her at school.

She said she’d come to a town council meeting, which likely meant she regularly attended, as did many residents of Misted Pines, and he couldn’t for the life of him place her there.

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