When the Bough Breaks (Rose Gardner Investigations #6) - Denise Grover Swank Page 0,31

Kate said as she moved behind the cheap desk in the center of the room and pulled out the desk chair. “Do you know the login and password?”

Mike’s mother frowned. “I do for the computer, but not for the bookkeeping program.”

“Hopefully the fields will autofill,” Neely Kate said, then looked up at Barb, waiting for the computer login information.

Her face turned pink. “It’s Violet Mae, no space, and the password is their anniversary.”

Neely Kate glanced at me with tears in her eyes.

I leaned over the desk and typed in the date, and the computer sprang to life.

The loss of my sister caught my breath, and I placed my hand on my chest to help ease the sharp pain in my heart. Needing a moment, I walked into the front room and tried to catch my breath and fight back tears. I knew I needed to get it together—for all I knew, the receptionist was a workaholic who’d take a five-minute lunch—but I needed to regain my focus. I had to think about finding Vi’s kids, not crying for the millionth time over the loss of my sister.

“It hurt him, you know,” Barb said quietly behind me, having apparently followed me out of the room.

“What hurt him?” I asked, staring out the windows at the parking lot. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her.

“When Violet chose you over him. When he couldn’t be there with her at the end.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Is that why he kept the kids from me? To punish me?”

“That. And other things.”

I turned to look at her. “What other things?”

She pressed her lips together and shook her head.

“Does it have anything to do with why the kids are missing?”

“Mike’s missing too,” she said, almost in a whine. “Are you looking for him as well?”

“I’m sure Joe is.”

“But you’re not?” she countered.

I turned to face her. “He’s not my priority, Barb. If I find him along the way, then so be it.”

Bitterness filled her eyes. “I never should have let you in here. I never should have agreed to help you.”

“You did it to potentially save your grandchildren, who were put in this situation through no fault of their own. Mike, on the other hand…”

“You’re one to talk,” she snapped. “You were cavorting with criminals.”

For a moment, I thought she’d found out about my personal relationship with James Malcolm, but then I realized she was talking about our cooperation to bring down J.R. Simmons, Joe and Neely Kate’s father. “I was working with law enforcement,” I said. “I wore a wire to get him arrested. I was held at gunpoint.”

She remained silent.

“You know what’s funny?” I asked in a humorless tone. “Mike kept me away from the kids supposedly because he worried my association with the criminal element put them in danger, but I suspect it was his own involvement that put them in harm’s way.” Then I spun around and started to head back to the office.

“Are you really not going to get married before you have that baby?” she asked in disgust. “Are you gonna make that poor baby a bastard?”

I stopped in my tracks and turned back to face her. “Do not mistake my concern for your grandchildren with tolerance for your hateful opinions.” I walked into the office. “Neely Kate, are you almost done?”

She looked up at me with worry in her eyes. “Yeah. I’m almost finished copying the files onto a flash drive.”

I nodded as I scanned the photos of Violet and the kids.

“You okay?”

“Just peachy.”

She cast a glance past me into the front room and frowned. “What did she say?”

“Nothing important. Finish that up so we can get out of here.”

“Almost done. Got the login and password too, so we can sign in from another computer, but I suspect it might be risky to log back in.” She made a few more keystrokes, then beamed. “Done.”

As she started to stand, Barb called out. “There’s a sheriff car pulling up out front.”

Relief filled Neely Kate’s eyes. “Just in time.”

We both poked our heads out of the office to look through the front window. Sure enough, a sheriff car was pulling into a parking space in front of the office.

“Get out of here,” Mike’s mother said, sounding agitated. “I’ll keep them busy while you go out the back.”

A deputy was getting out of his car, and Barb pushed open the front door and went out to greet him. She pointed down the street, and Neely Kate and I slipped