Read Online Bed of Bones (A Sloane Monroe Novel, Book Five) by Cheryl Bradshaw - Free Book Online Page B

even after all this time, his father is still paying people to prove his son’s death wasn’t a suicide. He thinks somehow, someday, he’ll find proof of his son’s murder.” She leaned forward, curling her bottom lip into a provocative grin. “Do you want to know something? He never will.”
    In my life, I chased after the truth with such delirious passion, thinking once I found it my mind would finally be at ease. That I could rest easy, satisfied with the knowledge placed before me. In reality, at times that very truth sliced through me like the edge of an executioner’s sword, hacking into my soul until, at last, it was extracted from my body and separated from me.
    And to think, two years earlier I actually thought the Mafia no longer existed.

CHAPTER 15
    Brynn Rowland had a gap between her two front teeth wide enough to slip a penny through the slot and eyes that reminded me of a mood ring. Depending on where I stood, the color was always changing. I guesstimated her age to be somewhere in the almost-thirty range. But one of the things I was known for was my grossly inaccurate perception of age. Her left arm was in a cast. The rest of her body, the parts I could see, appeared like they’d been spared from serious injury.
    Even hunched over in the hospital bed, I could tell she was taller than the average woman. Stronger too. So when she squeaked a barely audible “hello,” when I entered the room, it caught me off guard.
    “How long have you been Melody Sinclair’s assistant?” I asked.
    She rested her uninjured arm on the blanket in front of her. “Three years.”
    “What’s she like?”
    She started to answer, then looked at the television overhead. The screen flaunted a bikini-clad picture of Melody along with the caption:
    BOMBING SUSPECT STILL MISSING. INVESTIGATORS PROCESSING EVIDENCE FROM SUSPECT’S CAR FOR CLUES.
    In the photo, Melody grasped the railing of a boat with both hands, a cruise ship from the looks of it. She stared straight at the camera, her eyes gleaming, full of life. A soft smile stretched across her face. She certainly didn’t look like a killer.
    Brynn stared at the TV for a few seconds then shifted her gaze to an artificial plant in the corner. A single tear trickled out of the corner of her left eye, sliding down her cheek. She wiped it away. I grabbed the remote, switched the television off.
    “Melody is a nice, caring person,” she began. “She didn’t do anything. Not what they’re suggesting. She’d never hurt anyone. She couldn’t.”
    “I’m not saying she did.”
    Brynn blinked away a few more tears. “Then why are you here?”
    “Melody has some very powerful friends. One in particular wants to know what happened to her that night and why. I’m here on his behalf. I’m not with the police.”
    “So…you’re trying to find her before they do?”
    Nicely put.
    For all the “innocent until proven guilty” talk touted by the law, putting Melody on blast across every major media channel in the nation didn’t make her the victim, it made her the villain. The public had already decided: guilty. Convincing them otherwise wouldn’t be easy.
    Brynn reclined back onto the pillow behind her. She fisted a hand, rubbed her eyelid. “I want to help you, but I don’t know what happened.”
    I tried a simpler approach.
    “My grandfather once said most of the time the people closest to us hold the key that unravels the mystery. You might have valuable information and not even know it.”
    “Such as?”
    “Let’s talk about the night of the movie premiere. When was the last time you saw her?”
    “Right after she introduced the film on stage, before the movie started.”
    “What time did her speech end?” I asked.
    “Maybe 11:15 or so. I met her in the hall at the front entrance of the theater.”
    “What did she say?”
    “She’d misplaced her glasses and wanted to see if she’d left them in the car. I offered to go so she wouldn’t miss anything.