Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
I wouldn’t make a good cop—I definitely got too involved emotionally. I wanted answers and justice for all of the women I investigated. But this one, Hillary Atkins, fifteen, dead far too young…
I wanted someone to pay for her loss.
And somehow, after long conversations and slowly built trust, I got the ex to tell me what she knew. It wasn’t a smoking gun; she didn’t have proof or firsthand knowledge of what Troy Baker had done to Hillary. But she mentioned a name, a friend of Troy’s. And it turned out Troy had bragged to that friend. And, like hopscotching stones to get across a river, I followed one clue to the next until we discovered where Troy had hidden the trophies he’d taken from Hillary after he killed her.
By the end of season three, Troy Baker was sitting in a jail cell, and I was a household name.
That was a year ago. The household name part didn’t last very long—better for me. It’s hard to investigate when everyone knows who you are. But it had been enough to propel me into a different level of notoriety and given me the ability to support myself through sponsors. No more ramen, no worrying about selling plasma for gas money. I wasn’t a millionaire, but I had enough to keep doing what I loved.
And I did love it, even on nights like tonight when I was frustrated and getting nowhere.
I pulled my sweater tighter around me and stretched my legs, grimacing when I bumped my desk. I liked my little vehicular nest with everything I could need, but it was tight quarters. I had a queen-size Murphy bed that folded up to one side. When it was up, I could pull out my desk and swing out my wide monitor on an arm. The monitor did double duty as a TV when I had the bed folded down. Between the seats in the front and the bed/office area, I had a tiny kitchen and an equally tiny shower-bath.
I didn’t mind clocking my elbows on the wall when I washed my hair if it meant I had my own private bathroom. Sometimes I stayed in campgrounds where I could hook up to utilities. And sometimes, like tonight, I found a moderately legal parking spot and hoped I’d be able to spend the night in one place. I was currently parked on a side street in Midtown Atlanta, grinding my teeth after another frustrating day of dead leads. The closest campground was a haul outside the city, and in the cold, dark drizzle, I didn’t feel like making the drive.
My stomach growled. I leaned back to stare at the wood-paneled ceiling of the van, considering what exactly I was going to do about that. I’d been holed up in here for hours, debating what to do next, and had, as I often did, forgotten to think about food until my stomach was yowling for it.
I didn’t bother to check the Dometic fridge drawer or the cabinets above the small sink. Canned tuna. A half-empty jar of peanut butter. Probably some yogurt of questionable age. I didn’t want any of that.
I thought of a hot, greasy burger and fries with a strawberry milkshake. I’d passed a place a couple of blocks away. It would be a wet, dark walk in the rain, but I glanced at the clock: 7:48 p.m. Definitely still open.
Drawing in a breath, I let it out in a gust, staring at the monitor in front of me, the cursor blinking in my notes file. My very empty notes file. I’d come to Atlanta chasing a lead that had turned into a brick wall, as everything about Emily Shaw’s death seemed to do.
From the beginning, her murder had been smoke and mirrors: a freelance data analyst died when her car exploded in the driveway of her suburban townhome. Cars didn’t just explode on their own, not like Emily Shaw’s car had exploded. And the fact that she looked at data for a living left me wondering if she’d seen something she shouldn’t have. It was all weird enough to catch my attention. And interesting, because the news reports had been so vague about her professional background. The lack of detail seemed deliberate. I couldn’t stop asking myself—who was Emily Shaw? People died by murder all the time; I knew that better than anyone. A gunshot, a stabbing. These were the crimes I ran into day after day. But a car bomb? That was rarely a crime of passion or one of opportunity. A car bomb implied premeditation.
But if Emily Shaw was a simple freelance data analyst, what had she seen, and who would kill to keep her quiet? And then the stories had disappeared from the media. Nothing, not another word. No one knew what had happened, and it was over. Unsolved, case closed. That had drawn me back. Who had decided Emily Shaw had to die? And why?