If She Heard (Kate Wise Mystery #7) - Blake Pierce Page 0,4

Sandra thought. Her car is out front.

She then recalled a particularly ungraceful moment from her own teenage years where she had driven home drunk out of her mind. She’d managed to make it home but had passed out in her car, in the driveway. She found it hard to imagine Kayla behaving in such a way but there were only so many other possibilities to consider.

As Sandra closed Kayla’s bedroom door and walked back through the kitchen, a little ball of worry bounced around in her stomach. Maybe Kayla had been hiding some drinking or drug problems from her. Maybe they’d spend their day talking through such things rather than their planned day of fun.

Sandra steeled up her courage to have such a conversation as she opened the front door. Just as she stepped out onto the porch, she froze. Her left leg literally paused in the air, refusing to set down.

Because if she set her foot down, she was stepping into a new world—a world where what she saw on her front porch was going to have to be faced and accepted.

Kayla was lying on the porch. She was on her back and staring up with unblinking eyes. There were red abrasions around her throat. She was not moving.

Sandra finally brought that other foot down. When she did, the rest of her body followed it. She fell into a crumpled ball by her dead daughter, thoughts of breakfast and shopping completely forgotten.

CHAPTER THREE

It never got any easier to step into a meeting with Director Duran. He had always been fair with Kate and she even considered him a good friend. But the nature of the call and the way the last few months of her life had gone made Kate think that this was going to be a tense meeting—perhaps a meeting that would put an end to her briefly resurrected career as an FBI agent.

When she stepped into his office, he greeted her with the no-nonsense smile she had come to know and appreciate ever since he had taken over for the director who had overseen the first half of her career. She and Duran were roughly the same age (she had never bothered to ask how old he was because it seemed rude) and had a mutual appreciation for one another.

“Hey, Kate, have a seat.”

She was immediately alarmed that he had used her first name. It was very informal, something he had only ever done in after-hours situations or when conversations had gotten heated.

“Kate, huh?” she asked. She was beyond the point of being nervous around him. She made the comment in jest, as if basically painting the situation for what it was and placing it neatly on the desk between them.

“Well, as far as I’m concerned, you’re still on your extended maternity leave,” he said. “Seemed silly to call you agent. However, as you might have imagined, all of that is sort of why I wanted to speak with you.” He let out a deep breath here and looked her straight in the eyes. “How are you, Kate?”

“Good. Confused, I guess.”

“Feeling like the Miracle Mom?”

“I suppose I do fit right in with the celebrity circles, don’t I?” she joked. “I need to hurry this up, by the way. I have a lunch scheduled with Ryan Seacrest right after this.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

Kate shrugged. Humor had never really been a part of their relationship anyway.

“I won’t lie,” Duran said. “It was sort of cool around here. People quick to say they knew you. Sharing links and articles about the Miracle Mom.”

“You know, I only did two interviews. How that turned into more than forty articles, I’ll never know.”

“That’s social media for you. It was nuts. Anyway…tell me, Kate. Has your newfound fame made you think twice about returning to the bureau?”

She couldn’t help but laugh. “No. If anything is going to keep me from coming back, it would not be my brush with fame.”

“But something could stop you?”

“Maybe. My baby, for one. My age for another.”

“You’ve been out for three months now,” he said. “A little more, actually. I suppose I don’t need to point out that you’re not getting younger. Still…your body of work post-retirement is pretty impressive.”

“Forgive me for being so blunt and to the point,” Kate said. “But what do you want? Do you want me back?”

“In a perfect world, yes. But there have been meetings here and there. All of those articles not only highlight that you gave birth at fifty-seven,