Page 96 of Run for Her Life
“What?” Zoe said. She felt everything tilt and go out of focus. “What does that mean?”
“It’s a sibling match,” Mackenzie continued slowly, gauging her reaction. “I know you have a sister who lives on the East Coast. But this DNA is male. Do you have a half-brother?”
Zoe had no idea. She couldn’t breathe. Her pulse was skyrocketing. A cold, brutal sensation coated her bones. Aiden was at her side, telling her to calm down. “No, I had no idea.”
Mackenzie looked down, biting her lip. “I had a feeling you didn’t, which is why I wanted to break the news to you in person.”
Zoe didn’t know how many more secrets there were for her to unearth. But she knew deep down that this could finally lead her to the mastermind behind her mother’s death.
She was going back to Lakemore.
EPILOGUE
The drone of the sheriff’s station was comfortingly dull. The sound of computers buzzing, phones chirping now and then, and the low murmur of conversation. Lisa Gray sat at her desk, halfway through a stale cup of coffee, pretending to care about the number of unopened emails on her screen.
There was a comfort in slipping back into what was familiar. She decided that she liked predictability—she knew the sound her chair made when she swiveled, how lukewarm the coffee that dribbled out of the machine was, and how the receptionist—an old lady civilian volunteer—would hum the same tune every morning.
Like a warm blanket after a storm.
But something was different. The picture of her and Jim she kept on her desk was missing. Her entire being was fragmented. There was the Lisa who was the wife of a murderer, and there was the Lisa who showed up at work.
The first day she’d arrived all eyes had been drawn in her direction, their gazes sticky and stinging. She’d left early with tears bubbling in the back of her throat. But the next day, she showed up again. It was the only life she knew.
These boring brown walls, the slow Internet, and sullen, gray skies.
Across from her, Deputy Toby cracked sunflower seeds between his teeth and let the husks fall into a paper cup.
“You see that raccoon video I sent you?” he asked, not looking up.
Lisa didn’t even pause in her typing. “The one where it steals the pizza?”
“Yeah. Clever little bastard.”
“They’re getting bolder,” she said, sipping her coffee. “Next thing you know, they’re gonna want our badges.”
Toby chuckled, feet up on his desk. “Why are you still here, Lisa?”
“What do you mean?”
His chipper demeanor dimmed. “You helped crack open a big case with the FBI. And this county won’t let you forget the scandal. We’re small-town people.”
She smiled faintly, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I’m fine, Toby. This is my home. Why should I uproot everything when I did nothing wrong?”
The revelation had clogged her senses. She was cloudy and distracted. Maybe she was making a mistake by staying. Maybe she wasn’t thinking straight anymore. These past few days in particular, Jim’s betrayal was sitting inside her stomach like a ball of gunk. She would wake up in the middle of the night, sweating and nauseated.
But this morning, her mind whispered something to her.
Her hand drifted to her stomach in a quick, unconscious motion before she stood.
“Back in a sec,” she said, grabbing her phone and heading down the hall.
The bathroom was cold, the kind of cold only bad lighting and old tile could make worse. She locked the stall and pulled the small pharmacy bag from inside her jacket.
Her fingers moved quickly. The box crinkled open and the test unwrapped. She stared at it for a second longer than she needed to—then did what she came to do.
Time stretched while she waited and exited the stall. She leaned against the sink, arms crossed, watching the second hand of her watch tick by.
Finally, she looked down.
