Read Online Cold Case Affair by Loreth Anne White - Free Book Online

Then he leaped up, digging into his back pocket for his wallet. He dumped a wad of cash onto the table, and ran after her into the street. “Muirinn! Stop!”
    She didn’t look back.
    Instead, she waved wildly to a passing cab.
    She was in the door, and the cab was pulling off, before he reached her.
    Jett watched the brake lights flare at the stop sign at the end of the block. Then the cab turned the corner and vanished.
    He stood there in the street, shell-shocked.
    She still loved him.
    She’d never stopped.
    Exhilaration mounted inside him like a wild thing, coupled tightly with fear for his child. Because she was still capable of dumping him—just as she’d obviously dumped the father of her new baby.
     
    “If O’Donnell has accessed that laptop, it means she’s seen the old man’s theory,” said the voice on the phone. “It’s only a matter of time before she connects the rest of the dots.”
    “Christ, if this gets out—”
    “It can’t .”
    “So what do we do now?”
    Silence. Heavy, loaded silence.
    “Oh, sweet Jesus, no. If something happens to Muirinn O’Donnell it’s going send red flags up all over the goddamn place!”
    “Then we control those flags, because—” The voice lowered. “—the alternative is far, far worse.”
    “What about him? ”
    “We don’t know how deep he is in yet, which is why this must happen fast—understand? One step at a time.”
    More silence.
    “Look, we can handle this—we’ve managed worse before, remember?” The voice went even quieter still. “Find a way. Just make sure it looks like an accident.”
    The phone clicked.

Chapter 5
    M uirinn powered up Gus’s laptap.
    After fleeing Jett in the cab yesterday she’d spent the afternoon tidying her grandfather’s attic office, and the evening going through the newspaper company books. Her sleep that night had been fitful, and she’d awakened late in the morning to learn from Mrs. Wilkie that Jett had quietly come around at 5:00 a.m to replace the fuel sump in the truck.
    Clearly, he’d been avoiding her.
    It was for the best.
    Muirinn exhaled in exasperation as she pulled her hair back into a severe ponytail. She was utterly mortified by what had come out of her mouth yesterday. Even more disturbing was the spark of need she’d glimpsed in his eyes, the tenderness she’d felt in his touch.
    It was all still there—their old bond, the raw, simmering attraction. She and Jett were like flame to fireworks. Alwayshad been. There was just no way she could be in his presence, or he in hers, without things exploding.
    She’d send him a thank-you note for fixing the truck, because her promise to herself—her vow to him—was to stay the hell out of his life until things settled down, and his wife and child returned.
    She rubbed her face angrily, and clicked open the file labeled Tolkin .
    And with slow, mounting horror, she began to read what her grandfather had written.
    According to Gus, the crime scene photographs labeled missing in the brown envelope, had “disappeared” from the Safe Harbor Police Department’s evidence room twenty years ago, during the violent snowstorm that delayed the FBI postblast team’s arrival for forty-eight hours.
    Since then they’d been in the possession of retired and recently deceased SHPD officer, Ike Potter.
    Over the last few years, Ike, who’d been suffering from cancer, had become a close friend of Gus’s. They’d played chess regularly at the Seven Seas Club. It was during these chess games that Ike had learned the sheer extent of Gus’s obsession with the Tolkin murders and his desperate need for closure, to find out who had killed his son.
    This knowledge had begun to wear Ike down, and on his deathbed, Ike had told Gus that he had wanted to come clean, to make peace with the past. And he’d told Gus his story, entrusting him with several crime scene photos that had been kept in a safe deposit box up until that point.
    Muirinn scrolled further.
    The