Read Online The Best Man to Trust by Kerry Connor - Free Book Online

wasn’t looking forward to moving the body, but it had to be done. He hadn’t been much of a friend to Haley since college, but at least he could do this for her. Not only did Haley deserve to be treated with care, but there might be clues that could indicate who’d done this to her.
    And if there was no way out of here, the most important thing was to identify the killer in their midst.
    Before he—or she—could strike again.

Chapter Six
    The sight of the body lying in the middle of the hallway wasn’t any easier to see the second time. As soon as Meredith stepped onto the second floor and spotted Haley there, she had to repress a shudder, the wave of revulsion rising in her belly.
    “Let me get my cameras,” Tom said softly. Moving past them, he headed toward his room, carefully avoiding the body in the center of the hall.
    Beside her, she heard Rick swear under his breath, and she realized this was his first time seeing the body. She glanced over at him, his face paler than it had been moments earlier. “Thank you for doing this,” she murmured. “You don’t have to, though, if you don’t want to. I know it’s above and beyond the call of duty.”
    “It’s okay,” he said. “I can handle it. It’s not my first time seeing a dead body. But I guess you never really get used to it, and I’ve sure never seen anything like this.”
    She’d forgotten for a moment that Rick had served in the army and done several tours of duty overseas. She should have realized he’d seen the dead before, though from his expression there was something uniquely horrifying about this.
    Tom returned with the handheld video camera and Nikon he’d brought. Meredith and Rick waited out of the way as he slowly and methodically went about documenting the scene, first on still images, then on video.
    It was fascinating watching him work. He took his time, recording every inch of the body and area around it. The hands that held the camera were steady and true, his gaze just as stable as he focused on the screen on the camera. When he moved in front of her, she caught glimpses of the screen, observing how he zoomed in and out to give both a close and wider view of what he was recording.
    Meredith watched him bend on one knee, focusing the camera on the floor beside the body. Curious, she leaned closer to see what he was fixing on.
    Then she spotted them, the series of red marks on the carpet leading from the body. “Is that blood?”
    “Looks like it,” he confirmed.
    Meredith followed the trail with her eyes, from where it began at the body to a door several feet away.
    “That’s the door to Haley’s room,” she noted just as he began to turn the camera on it. Why would there be a trail of blood from Haley’s room toward the body? She supposed the most obvious answer was...
    She stepped forward. “Do you want me to open it?” she asked, referring to the door.
    Tom never took his eyes from the viewer on the camera. “I think you should.”
    Meredith reached out and released the door, then slowly nudged it open. The light was still on inside. Almost immediately she spotted the blood just inside the door, leading farther into the room, growing denser as it proceeded.
    Tom carefully moved inside, tracking the blood with his camera. Meredith followed a few steps behind, unable to resist, even as a little tremor of unease rumbled through her. She felt Rick fall into line behind her.
    Tom came to an abrupt stop, aiming the camera toward the center of the room. Meredith peered around his shoulder, her breath hitching as she saw what he was recording. There was no mistaking the blood splattered across the center of the floor, the pool thick and wide on the blue rug she’d chosen and laid in place herself.
    “ This is the murder scene,” she whispered hoarsely.
    “I would bet on it,” Tom said.
    “So she was killed in here and then moved out into the hallway.” It certainly explained why the trail of blood got smaller as it