Love Inspired Suspense April 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 by Laura Scott (free e reader .TXT) 📕

himself. Mr. Pope, the driver. You probably know that he died last year.” She took two steps back, cocked her head at a different angle, hoping for a new take on the pictures. “What I don’t see is how they help us discover who’s doing this.”

“Me, either. The pieces are there. And so is the answer. I feel it in my gut. I just don’t have them in the right places yet. If I juggle them into different places—” he moved the pictures around “—they still aren’t telling me anything.”

She tucked her thumbs in the back pockets of her jeans and rocked back on her heels. “Like a jigsaw puzzle.”

“Just like.”

“Maybe we aren’t asking the right questions.” Another rock back on her heels. At the same time, she rolled her bottom lip inward and caught it between her teeth.

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve been asking who has reason to kill the survivors.”

Liam’s nod was thoughtful. “What should we be asking?”

“Maybe we should ask ourselves why now. Why did the killings start when they did, and what secret is someone trying to hide? This is more than just killing off those who got out of the bus that day. If that were the case, the killings would have started a lot sooner.”

She spoke slowly as the theory took shape in her mind. “Something’s changed. Something important enough that makes it imperative the survivors be eliminated. If we knew what that something was, we’d be a lot closer to finding the killer.

“Why now?” she asked again. “After fifteen years, why start killing the survivors now?” She circled back to the idea of secrets. “Secrets have a way of coming out no matter how deeply they’re buried. We discover that secret, we find the killer.” She said it with more certainty this time.

Liam reached out to brush an errant strand of hair from her face.

She started at his touch.

“I’m sorry,” he said and withdrew his hand quickly. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“You didn’t.” That wasn’t strictly true. His touch had startled her, but not for the reason he thought.

Since Ethan’s death, she’d worked alongside men. The accidental brush of an arm or a hand had left her unmoved. So why did Liam’s touch evoke such a reaction?

It made no sense. No sense at all.

With herculean effort, she pushed away the feelings and focused on the job. She kept coming back to the same question. What had happened in the years between the accident and now to make someone want to kill off the survivors?

She and Liam bounced theories back and forth, but none felt right. Most people didn’t murder without a reason. Even psychopaths had a reason, even if it was one only they could understand.

“Your theory about a secret would explain why the killings started now, rather than five, ten or fifteen years ago.” He went quiet, and she knew he was rolling it around in his mind. “Lots of people have a secret or two in their past, something they’d prefer others not know, but a secret worth killing for? Something that big takes it to a whole new level.”

“That’s why it’s so important you think back on that day. Something happened. Something besides the accident.”

“Something bigger than five kids dying?” Skepticism was heavy in his voice.

“Maybe something that points to the reason the bus driver fell asleep at that moment.” She pulled up memories of that time. “Pope was never charged, though plenty of people were clamoring for just that, including my parents. They wrote letters to the district attorney and demanded he be held accountable, but nothing ever came of it. I remember feeling sorry for his wife and son.”

“They left him,” Liam said. “I can’t say that I blame them. And we can’t escape the fact that he was to blame for the bus going off the bridge. He fell asleep. It wasn’t like he set out to kill anyone, but he was responsible. Your idea about a secret is a good one, but I don’t see where this is leading.”

Discouragement settled in as she accepted the truth of that. Her theory that someone was killing off the survivors to keep a secret was just that: a theory. She had nothing to back it up. Nothing but a hunch. Cases were built on irrefutable evidence.

“I see you included the bus driver’s family. Why don’t we pay them a visit tomorrow? His wife or son might remember something of that day.”

“Why don’t we?”

Mindful of the time and his promise to get some sleep, she said, “Time for me to leave. Can I take a picture of the boards before I go? I want to study them at home.”

“Go ahead.”

Using her cell phone, she took pictures of the two boards. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

At home, she looked over the pictures again. Nothing popped.

The following morning, Paige and Liam were on their way to the last known address of the bus driver’s wife and son. A little digging revealed that the driver’s wife had taken their then twelve-year-old son and left her husband shortly after the accident.

It couldn’t have been easy for them, Liam reflected. Calvin Pope had been regarded as the villain of the piece and had taken the brunt of blame for the deaths. Though he hadn’t been charged with a crime, it had been close. In the end, the city prosecutor had decided that a trial would only prolong the suffering and pain of those families who had lost a child. No evidence had come to light that he had planned the accident. Driver error was the consensus, a tragic accident with deadly consequences.

Though there was no law against drowsy driving in the state, civil cases had been brought by two families of the kids who’d died. The other three families, including Paige’s, had elected not to go that route, deciding not to prolong the agony. The juries had ultimately ruled against the families, creating more bitterness, more pain.

As Liam followed GPS directions to Pope’s wife’s