Read Online Forbidden Fruit by Erica Spindler - Free Book Online Page A

leads, no lucky breaks. On to a new victim.
    Her body was barely in the ground, and they had closed the case. They hadn’t told him that, but Santos knew it to be true. Some things didn’t have to be spoken to be real.
    Who cared about a nobody hooker?
    Who gave a shit?
    Santos dropped his head into his hands, his mother’s image filling his head. He pictured her the way she had looked that last time he’d seen her. With his mind’s eye could see her looking over her shoulder at him, smiling, waving goodbye.
    He hadn’t kissed her goodbye. He hadn’t told her he loved her. He had thought himself too grown-up for that.
    His eyes burned, and he pressed his lips tightly together. He kept his tears at bay, but the image in his head changed, shifted, becoming the nightmare images he awoke from every night, awoke from bathed in sweat, tears on his cheeks. Slasher-flick images of his mother and her attacker; his mother calling out for her son, begging Santos to come help her. And then he saw his mother as she had been when he’d ripped away the white sheet.
    She had cried out for him; he hadn’t been there for her. He had laughed at her fears. He had done what he wanted to, without concern for her feelings. Without concern for her safety.
    And now she was dead.
    Guilt clawed at him. He brought the heels of his hands to his eyes. She had been with that john because of him—because he needed school clothes and expensive doctor visits. She was dead because he hadn’t been there to save her.
    Had her last thoughts been of him? he wondered for what seemed like the millionth time. Had she been angry with him? Disappointed? Tears lodged in his throat, choking him. Why had he disobeyed her? Why had he stayed so late with Tina?
    He hadn’t remembered Tina until two days later and only then because the police had made him recount every detail of the night his mother had been murdered. They hadn’t found her, but several of the other kids had verified his alibi.
    Too caught up in his own pain, he had wondered only fleetingly what had happened to the girl, wondered if she had gone home and what she had thought when he hadn’t returned for her. Those wonderings always dissolved into his own guilt and shame. His own pain.
    If he had been home, his mother would be alive.
    He knew it, deep down in his gut. It was his fault his mother was dead.
    â€œYou okay, Victor?”
    Santos looked up into the kind eyes of the baby-faced officer from the other night. Jacobs, his badge said. The man had been more than decent to him, he had gone beyond his duty as an officer to try to comfort him. Santos’s vision blurred; he tried to speak but couldn’t.
    The cop put his hand on his shoulder. “I’m really sorry, Victor. Is there anything I can do for you?”
    Santos fisted his fingers, fighting for control. “Find her killer.”
    The man’s face registered regret. “I’m sorry. We’re trying.”
    â€œRight. Tell me another one.”
    Officer Jacobs ignored his sarcasm. “I know how tough this must be for you.”
    â€œDo you?” Santos asked, helpless anger rising in him. “Was your mother brutally murdered? Was her murder all but ignored? Treated like nothing but a…a two-bit, page-six news item?” Santos’s voice thickened with grief. “And did you know in your heart that you could have prevented her death, if only…if only you had been home. If only you hadn’t been—”
    â€œWhoa, Victor. Hold it.” Jacobs sat beside him. “What do you mean, you could have prevented it?”
    â€œWhat do you think I mean?” Santos clenched his hands harder, his eyes and throat burning with unshed tears. “If I’d been home…maybe the guy wouldn’t have done it. Maybe my being there would have scared him away. Or, I could have fought him. I could have helped her, I know