The Chain of Lies - By Debra Burroughs Page 0,69

message. She rolled over in her bed and felt for her phone. Through bleary eyes, she could see the time on her digital alarm clock—which she purposely did not set—read eight thirty-five. It was almost three in the morning when she had finally crawled into bed, and she was having a hard time opening her eyes and focusing, even in the bright morning light.

Pulling herself up against her pillows, she worked to get her tired eyes to adjust to the tiny screen on her phone. The text was from Isabel. Took gun to lab. Results asap.

Flipping the comforter back, she dragged herself out of bed and wandered into the sunny kitchen, in her bare feet and oversized t-shirt, to make her morning coffee. Her phone buzzed again. Her eyes were still adjusting to the sunlight streaming in through the kitchen window over the sink, but she was beginning to focus.

The text was from Colin this time. Morning, Sleeping Beauty. Gun in lab, will have results today. R U up?

Emily texted back. I’m up. Not awake, but up.

She pulled herself up on a stool at the breakfast bar, ran her fingers through her curls, and waited for the coffee machine to do its thing.

Be there in 10 minutes, his next text read.

“Shoot!”

No time for coffee.

As she sprinted down the hall to throw on some clothes and a dab of makeup, the tone on her phone signaled another text. It was Colin again.

She paused in the doorway of her bedroom and looked at her phone. His text read Gotcha! LOL! Stuck at work. Meet 4 lunch?

We’ll see, she shot back, bristling with annoyance as she padded back to the kitchen to get her cup of coffee.

Opening the cabinet, she pulled a coffee mug out and poured the steaming dark liquid into it. Since Colin was stuck at work for the morning and Isabel apparently was too, Emily decided she’d drop by the hospital and see if there was any news on Molly.

She ripped open a packet of sweetener and emptied it into her cup. As she swirled it around with her spoon, she thought about Jethro, who was also in the hospital. Should she call him Jerry, now that she knew who he really was? Should she pay him a surprise visit? Terminally ill or not, if he was Evan’s murderer, she had to know.

How could she approach him without seeming insensitive to a dying man?

Her thoughts flew back to the gun Evan had hidden away at the bank and the note she’d found bundled in the center of a banded wad of money he had kept secret from her. She recalled the handwritten note said he had wrestled the gun away from someone who had tried to kill him but slipped away when Evan fought back. Could that someone be Jerry Banderas? Had he returned and finished the job? Did he blame Evan for his daughter’s death and so took his life as payback?

The Beretta was now in the hands of the FBI lab, Isabel saw to that, and she would have some answers soon.

As she sat on a stool, drinking her coffee, her phone shrilled on the counter and she jumped at the noise. She had been lost in her thoughts, but she was instantly pulled back to reality by the ringing. She picked up her phone off the breakfast bar, noticing the caller was Maggie this time.

“Good morning, Maggs,” Emily answered brightly. “Any news on Molly?”

“That’s why I’m callin’. Peter and I stayed at the hospital all night, hopin’ that girl would wake up—and she finally did.”

“Oh, Maggie, that’s great news!” Emily slid off the stool and stamped her feet in a little happy dance, spinning around with joy and relief. Abruptly, she stopped. “She is going to be all right, isn’t she?”

“The doctor believes so, but they want to keep her another day or two for observation. She had some heavy-duty sedatives in her system.”

“That poor girl. I want to get her story, find out how she ended up inside that house and what they did to her.” She knew Colin, Isabel, and Peter would as well, for their own reasons.

“Peter already asked her if he could interview her, but Camille pushed him right out of the room and gave him what-for.”

“Thanks for the warning. But I would like to come by and say hello, see if Camille and Jonathan need anything.”

“Now that she’s awake and doin’ okay, the doctor sent them home to get some rest. They

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