Famished, Meghan O'Flynn [free ebooks romance novels .txt] 📗
- Author: Meghan O'Flynn
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She blinked rapidly. “Is it Bianca?”
“It is, ma’am.”
She put the boy on the floor. “Go play in the room.”
He clung to her leg.
“Gavin, now!”
Gavin let go and scurried away.
They squeezed into the living room with the one window. She sat on a futon behind a large electrical wire spool topped with a plastic bowl of milky Cheerios. No other chairs. Petrosky stood across from her, Morrison in front of the door.
“What happened?” she asked finally.
“We found your daughter this morning in an abandoned barn off of Chickesaw.”
“By the hen?”
“Yes.”
“Is she—”
Fast and direct. “She’s dead, ma’am. The local coroner will have you make a positive identification, but her wallet was found with her. I’m sorry.”
Everette’s face didn’t change. “Will I have to go to the courthouse to identify her, or do ya have a picture? I don’t have time to be driving all the way to town right now.”
No surprise. No sadness. Petrosky clenched his jaw to keep it from dropping.
Morrison pulled out his phone and turned the screen to Petrosky. He’d gotten a shot of just the face—pale and dead, but none of the grisly mess. Petrosky nodded, and Morrison handed the phone to Everette.
Her face was impassive. “That’s her.” She handed the phone back.
“Gramma?” Gavin stood in the doorway, eyes wide. “When’s Mama coming home?”
“Get in the room, now! Ain’t you got no sense?”
Morrison startled and dropped his phone on the carpet. He bent and wiped it on his shirt before sticking it back in his pocket.
Petrosky watched the boy walk backward into the bedroom and close the door. “I take it you two weren’t close?”
“How could anyone be close to that?” Her eyes narrowed. “You shoulda seen the things she did.”
Disgusted by her own daughter. His killer would be smart enough to at least act upset, but Petrosky wanted to haul her ass down to the precinct anyway. “But she did live here?”
“Sometimes, when she couldn’t find somewhere else. I didn’t see her much.”
Morrison’s pen scratched on his notepad.
“Anything unusual in the last few weeks?” Petrosky asked.
Everette cocked her head as if she had no idea what that sentence meant.
“Any bruises? Mentions of anyone violent? A boyfriend?”
“Oh, she had boyfriends all right, but never for more than an evening. Some of ‘em beat her, some didn’t, but I don’t think she cared as long as she got her money. Not that she ever brought it back here.”
“Where did she go when she wasn’t here?”
“Hell if I know. She just left.”
“What about friends?”
“None that I know of.”
Something hit the bedroom door and thunked against the wall.
“Is Gavin her child?”
Everette snorted. “Her child. She pushed him out all right, but ain’t never bothered with him since.”
“She didn’t support him, then?”
“Nope, she sure didn’t. She didn’t even know who his father was. Didn’t do much of anything except sell her crotch to the highest bidder. I used to hope she’d get smarter, better, but she was just always bad.”
“Maybe she was just always desperate.”
She glared at him, lips tight.
Petrosky gave her a card. “If you think of anything, ma’am, please give me a call. We need to do everything we can to find the person who did this to her.”
Everette crumpled the card in her palm. Petrosky nodded to Morrison, and they let themselves out.
“What was that all about?” Morrison asked as their shoes beat against the frozen earth. “You think she hates her own kid?”
“Don’t know, but McCallum suspects that whoever is doing this had a disaster of a childhood. Mommy issues.” Not that they could really check. Most abuse went unreported, and even foster homes were a crapshoot when it came to safety.
“Do you think Graves knows—”
“Don’t worry about that asshole,” Petrosky snapped.
“Boss?”
“Fuck him, Morrison.”
“Yeah, Boss. Okay. But this is important.”
Petrosky yanked the car door open. “What?”
“The poem. It’s out of order.” Morrison pulled out his phone, tapped it a few times, and handed it to Petrosky. “We’re missing one verse.”
Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.
Petrosky passed the phone back and slid behind the wheel. “We’re not missing a poem. We’re missing a body.”
The itch was back. Robert had felt it as a child when he rolled around in the grass under the hanging tree, picturing the bodies dangling precariously above him as verdant blades irritated his skin. But he had not been back there since high school. And this itch was not one he could scratch.
He would have been what she needed. Whatever she needed. And now he couldn’t get to her.
Thomas sat on an adjacent barstool, staring at him like an idiot with dopey eyes in a dopier head. Robert wanted to punch him. Probably would punch him before the night was over.
“What’s going on, man? Sounds like the boss has been getting on your case. You need help?” Thomas sucked back his beer, too righteous to wait for an answer before he tended to his own needs. He’d be doing the same thing if Robert hadn’t been there at all.
But Thomas’s question made him uneasy. Robert needed to slow down, get his head straight. Two in the last week, poor substitutes, but he’d had no choice. It was the only way to release the pressure.
He spent every waking moment obsessing over Hannah. He lost himself in her eyes even as his boss berated him for mistakes on his projects, mistakes he never should have made. He couldn’t even recall designing the projects in question, let alone fucking them up.
“I just need to concentrate. Been having some trouble sleeping. Too much coffee.”
Lies. He was turning into an animal—growing claws and teeth, almost rabid with desire. He shook with the constant, desperate need to find the next, to take her, to slake his lust, lest he implode before he could beg Hannah to love him, to forgive him.
He had waited too long. Someone else had taken his Hannah.
Thomas raised a finger to order another round. “Maybe the beers will help, eh?”
Robert plastered a smile on his face, the face he needed to have to survive, to fit in. To keep them from knowing. “Perhaps.”
“I’m meeting up with Noelle in a little while. You want to join us?”
“On a date?”
“Kinda. We’re just going bowling. But you seem a little down like you could use some company.”
So, Thomas wanted to share his woman. Use her, throw her to the lions, watch her squirm. “I’m sure she’d love that.”
Thomas grinned.
Imbecile.
“Maybe if you show her how charming you are, she can hook you up with Hannah. You keep going out with all these other women, but you never see them again. What’s not to love about blond hair and tight pants? What’d they do to piss you off?”
The itch. His back crawled with the prickling of a thousand needles. “How do you know that?”
Thomas sipped, swallowed. “Know what?”
“What they look like?”
“I know you. You’ve got that photo on your desk of some woman.”
“Are you crazy? That’s my mother.”
“Yeah, your mother. They say we all look for someone like our moms.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“I dunno. Scientists.”
Behind the bar, the television flickered, taunting Robert with laughing newscasters. He looked away, heart hammering, half expecting Thomas to turn on him after some prim news anchor flashed his photo with a list of his sins laid bare for the world to see. And if Thomas saw his picture and was warned, Hannah would also see his face staring at her, telling her to stay far, far away from him.
He needed
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