Read Online the 13th Hour by Richard Doetsch - Free Book Online

the three-hour bus ride home, they became lost in the most relaxing conversation either had ever experienced.
Nick never once asked why she didn't listen to his advice, instead steering the conversation to everything but swimming.
They both loved camping, Led Zeppelin, the New York Giants, and the Detroit Red Wings. They shared a love of spare ribs and fried chicken, Oreos and Coca-Cola. She was a dancer, something he found alien and fascinating. He had a passion for skiing and music, which she insisted on hearing more about.
Simply put, they fit. They fit perfectly. And as the years went on, as they each headed off in different directions--she to Princeton, he to Boston College--their love never waned. In fact, it continued to grow past college and in each and every year of marriage.
That was not to say they didn't have their disagreements. While few and far between, their fights were spectacular, as their passion for each other was equaled by their passion for being right. But the disagreements, always over the mundane things like white bread or wheat, roses or tulips, never lingered and were resolved by spectacular lovemaking.
    N ICK LOOKED OUT the window of his high-ceilinged great room, at the evidence of last week's get-together with some friends: the deck chairs scattered around the pool, the tables and grill still a mess, three bags of garbage that he was supposed to have thrown out last Sunday. And amidst all the chaos, the pool was calm, the waters smooth and undisturbed, standing in sharp contrast to his current emotions.
The great room looked to be in its usual order: neat and clean but for the painting that had leaned against the far wall for the past six months, which he promised Julia he would hang, and the host of newspapers and magazines that lay on the ottoman, which he had yet to read. The dining room appeared as it usually did, the table perpetually set for a last-minute dinner party.
As Nick looked around his house, he couldn't imagine this to be a random murder. He thought maybe it was some opportunistic criminal who chose to profit in chaos. With everyone so focused on the plane crash, the town was collectively distracted, law enforcement stretched thin. But the randomness . . . something was surely missing, some unseen fact, a key to her death that would also be the key to her salvation.
Nick looked at his home with fresh eyes, searching for anything out of the ordinary, anything out of place or missing, anything that would provide a clue to why Julia was murdered.
He opened the pocket doors to his library and shined the Maglite around. Far smaller than Marcus's, more like a den, it was filled with the evidence of Nick and Julia's life together. If this single room were to survive a nuclear blast and were to be found intact five hundred years from now, an archeologist could draw an amazingly accurate picture of the lives of Nick and Julia Quinn. Their history was laid bare by the locked cabinet filled with trophies and medals from swimming, hockey, and lacrosse that they were too embarrassed to display but too nostalgic to part with; by the shelves of pictures and keepsakes, photos from their prom, graduation, and wedding, with dramatically different hairstyles but unchanged smiles; and by the dozens of pictures of their travels and family holidays. But mostly there were the goofy photos, the just-for-fun, what-the-hell pictures of snowball fights, carnival photo booth silliness, and ice-cream-covered faces that showed them unguarded and at their most natural.
Nick turned to his mahogany desk, moving aside the letters and files stacked to the side, and found his personal cell phone still in its charger. He picked it up and tucked it in his pocket. He had taken to carrying two phones: one personal and one for business, choosing to keep the two worlds separate. Having spent the day working from home, he'd left the personal cell in its charger and was thankful that he had done so as the police had taken