Harlequin Romantic Suspense April 2021 by Karen Whiddon (interesting books to read for teens TXT) 📕

He didn’t answer. Somehow, she knew he wouldn’t. Julia reached for the man’s wrist. His skin was icy, the flesh flaccid. She felt for a pulse. Nothing.

How in the hell had a seemingly healthy man ended up dead on the bench in the gazebo?

She looked for signs of foul play. There was no bruising around the neck from strangulation. No bullet hole indicating that the man had been shot. Not even a knife wound, crusted over with blood.

It was simply as if he’d sat down on the bench and died during the night.

The death was almost like all the others...

Julia felt the faintest amount of pressure on her back, as if she’d been touched by a gaze. Peering quickly over her shoulder, she saw only an empty street and deserted park.

“Get a grip, McCloud,” Julia said out loud. “Darcy Owens is in jail.”

Clamping her mouth shut, she ran her tongue over her teeth. She was talking to no one—hardly a sign that she had a grip on anything at all. Not to mention, it’s not like Darcy could’ve broken out without my hearing about it!

After removing the phone from her armband, Julia dialed the number to the sheriff’s office.

The call was answered after the second ring. “Deputy Travis Cooper.”

Travis Cooper had been with the Pleasant Pines sheriff’s office for almost two decades. In fact, he had been the most likely candidate to replace the murdered Sheriff Haak...until the raid on the motorcycle club’s compound went bad. Circumventing all law-enforcement protocol had cost Travis the job, but knowing Travis, she doubted that he regretted his decision at all.

He’d saved ten women being held against their will. One of the women was the daughter of Cassidy Frazier, Travis’s girlfriend. And he’d served his community by getting drugs off the street.

Sometimes right was right.

If Deputy Cooper resented Julia for getting the position he wanted, thanks to her friend, council member Everly Baker, he never let on.

“Cooper,” she said. “This is Sheriff McCloud. I know you’re just finishing up your shift, but I need you at the town park. And get Doc Lambert over here pronto.” Her training kicked in. There was evidence to gather. They needed to canvass for witnesses. Julia dared not touch the body without a pair of gloves—even to pat down the body to look for a wallet.

“Doc Lambert?”

“There’s a body at the town gazebo. Male. Caucasian. Blond hair. Looks to be between thirty and thirty-five years of age. No visible sign of trauma. Not even a button out of place.”

No visible sign of trauma. In other words, there was no reason the guy should be dead.

“I’ll call Doc on my way over,” he said.

Julia shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She knew her next question would sound crazy, yet she couldn’t help but ask it. “Hey, Trav. She’s there, right? Darcy is still in her cell.”

“I got a report from the Northern Wyoming Correctional Facility this morning. They’re keeping her in solitary.”

Julia would rather that Darcy was locked away in a maximum-security prison, yet all people—even garbage like Darcy—had the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. For now, she was being housed in the regional jail and awaiting trial. Her tone softened a little. “Thanks, Trav.” She added, “Tell Cassidy I’m sorry for keeping you late at work,” before ending the call.

Julia moved to the steps. Arms folded across her chest, she kept her posture rigid. As she stood there, Julia realized an ugly truth: death was once again stalking the peaceful town of Pleasant Pines. And now, finding out what happened to the guy on the bench was Julia’s number-one priority.

* * *

Covers draped across his chest, Luis Martinez slept. A fuzzy paw nudged his forehead. “Go away, cat,” he said, batting the feline to the floor.

Undeterred, Jinxy, Luis’s eight-year-old tabby, jumped back on the mattress. This time when she smacked, her claws were out. A flash of pain filled his ear.

“What the hell?”

Picking up the phone, he checked the time—6:20 a.m. He cursed. “It’s too damn early to be awake, and on a Sunday, too.”

The cat purred indifferently.

“I know—you don’t care.”

Throwing back the covers, he dropped his feet to the bare wooden floor. Wearing only boxer shorts, he wiped sleep from his eyes as he wandered from his bedroom to the kitchen. As he suspected, Jinxy’s dish sat on the kitchen floor, empty. After dumping food into the cat’s bowl, Luis turned on the coffee maker and filled the reservoir with water.

His apartment was on the third floor of a brick building, original to the founding of Pleasant Pines. When he first moved in, he thought that living downtown would put him in proximity to restaurants and bars. Instead, he got a hardware store on the first floor, a dental office on the second and a town that rolled up its sidewalks at 8:00 p.m.

It wasn’t exactly the thriving metropolis he’d hoped for.

Then again, coming to Pleasant Pines and taking the job with RMJ had been the fresh start that Luis needed. Maybe he didn’t need restaurants and bars on his doorstep.

After brewing a cup of coffee, Luis sank onto the sofa and picked up his tablet computer. Using an app, he connected to the local newspaper, the Pleasant Pines Gazette. The lead story on this Sunday morning was about Darcy Owens. No surprise there. The story said that Darcy Owens had admitted to a single murder. William “Billy” Dawson. According to Owens, Dawson had found her in the woods and kept her captive in an underground bunker. Her imprisonment ended when Owens attacked her captor, decapitating the man.

Luis knew that fact too well. He’d been part of the team that had discovered Billy’s dismembered corpse in the woods, miles outside of town. RMJ—Luis, Julia and all the others—had never been mentioned in the press...just like they had planned.

Darcy claimed self-defense. And since Luis had seen the bunker where Darcy had been held, he didn’t doubt that her statement