Left to Kill (Adele Sharp #4) - Blake Pierce Page 0,74
as he stared at his daughter through the open window of the squad car, his chin trembling. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I thought I could figure it out. I thought I could. She was my wife,” he shouted now. “Mine!”
“Dad, she divorced you. I don’t care. What candies? You better not have withheld evidence.” A cold wind was pulsing along the back of Adele’s neck. Her scalp prickled in the air and her eyes refused to blink, fixed in horror on her father.
Her dad swallowed. “It was nothing. So small. Nothing. She said something about candies. Thought they were poisoned. I didn’t think anything of it. It doesn’t make any sense anyway. It doesn’t.”
“Dad, that’s not for you to decide. That’s what the investigators are for!” Adele was screaming now, indifferent to the paramedics staring. A couple of them were moving toward the parked car.
“I’m sorry,” he kept repeating.
“I don’t care if you’re sorry. You hid evidence. Dad, look, you can’t figure this out on your own. You proved that. You should’ve given it to the people in charge of solving the case. You should have given it to me. What is this about candies—tell me everything. Tell me right now.”
Her dad shook his head, stunned. “It’s nothing. I told you, nothing.”
“Yeah, like that old couple was nothing. Nothing. Nothing with eight people buried in the well behind their house. How about you let me decide what’s nothing. Tell me right now. What is it?”
It seemed a strange thing to be up in arms over a silly word like candies. And yet Adele could feel a hook in her navel, something twisting deep in her stomach. Something telling her she was getting closer. Something telling her that her father had concealed evidence. And hid it from the officers. Hidden it from her. Her mother’s dead eyes stared out from the darkness above the squad car, fixed on Adele, accusing. Accusing her, knowing she could’ve solved it. But knowing the pieces of the puzzle had been hidden from her. How could she solve anything if she couldn’t even trust the people closest to her?
Flustered, horrible emotions swirled through her, exacerbated by the sirens behind her, exacerbated by the images of the torture dungeon they’d just raided. Exacerbated by her father’s refusal to admit that maybe he didn’t always have the correct answer.
Adele couldn’t be like him. She couldn’t afford to be. She always had to be right. There was no room for error. When she failed, everything collapsed. The others, they had leeway. They were allowed to make mistakes. Her father could make mistakes. But they simply had to trust her. It was her job to solve it. Her job to figure it out. Her job to bring justice to her mother. Her job to be perfect.
“Dad,” she said in an exhausted, trembling voice. “Dad,” she said, desperate, “please. What did you conceal from the investigation?”
“It was nothing.” He swallowed. “I told you, something so small. Candies, something about candies. She thought they might’ve been poisoned or something. Or that someone had tampered with them. I thought it was just silliness. I still don’t even know—it doesn’t mean anything.”
Adele slumped beneath the traffic light, shaking her head.
“Adele, I’m sorry,” he said.
She looked at him, stared him straight in the eyes, then turned and began to walk away.
“Adele, I’m sorry,” he called.
She continued to stomp up the road, ignoring his shouts, moving toward the parking structure, fuming, eyes fixed on the gray building ahead. She ignored him as her father continued to call after her, ignored when he fell silent, and, without looking back once, she entered the parking structure in search of John.
She found Agent Renee parked in the bottom level, his lanky form extended past the driver’s seat, his legs dangling out onto the asphalt.
He had a drink in hand, and Adele surmised that while he might not have enough German to track the investigation, he seemed to have enough to purchase alcohol.
She tried to suppress the sudden force of criticism swirling through her. But now, once more, she remembered why she hated professional failures. Why she hated unprofessional behavior. Because it compromised her ability to do her job.
“Get rid of that,” she snapped at John, waving a hand.
He glanced down at his container of what looked like whiskey, then up at her. “No,” he said.
Adele stopped in front of the car and rounded on him, a torrential force like a gale surging up in her. “Drop it; get rid