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

Jonah insisted that Paige stay for his favorite dinner of mac and cheese and hot dogs. Three bedtime stories and numerous glasses of water later, he was down for the count.

Working in tandem, Liam and Paige cleaned up the kitchen. When they were done, she said, “It’s not over.”

The killer had been caught, but the blackmailer was still out there. Until he or she was stopped, Liam and his son would never be safe.

Liam’s euphoria at being reunited with Jonah took a nosedive after he’d put his son to bed. Accumulated tension and fear had taken their toll, and he desperately wished he could put the whole thing behind him.

But Paige was right. It wasn’t over.

Not yet ready to talk about what came next, he thought about Reva. “Reva was just a kid back then. How did she go so wrong? Maybe if I’d stayed in touch with her after Marie died, things would have been different.”

“She made her choices a long time ago,” Paige said. “They’re finally catching up with her.”

“‘They that plow iniquity and sow mischief shall reap the same,’” he murmured, quoting a Scripture from the book of Job. It was a perfect caption for Reva’s life. “I’m surprised I remembered that.”

“I’m not.” Paige’s voice was soft. The moment hung, imbued with feelings neither was ready to give voice to.

The chirp of his phone interrupted the shimmer of feelings that remained. Liam glanced at the display and saw it was Detective Reineke. He put it on speaker so that Paige could hear.

After asking about Jonah, Reineke got down to the purpose for his call. “Ms. Thomas admits to everything except luring you and Ms. Walker to that trailer and trying to blow you up. Could be that she’s lying, but I tend to believe her. Looks like you may have another enemy out there, Mr. McKenzie.”

“Thanks, Detective. I appreciate you letting me know.” Liam hung up and looked at Paige. “What do you think?”

“I think he’s right. The blackmailer had reason to want you dead. You stood in the way of continuing to bleed Reva for money.”

“Okay,” he said at last. Reva had been caught, but the person who had set the murders in motion was still out there.

“Reva said that she’d started receiving the threats six weeks ago,” Paige reminded him. “Sam Newley died just around then. I keep coming back to that.”

“Me, too,” Liam admitted. “Sam would never have been involved in blackmail, though. It wasn’t his style.”

“No. I didn’t know him very well, but I could see that he was a straight-arrow kind of guy. You can’t deny the timing, though. Could Sam have seen Reva doctor Pope’s water bottle? Maybe that’s what turned him so thoughtful on the drive home.”

“Sam wouldn’t have let Pope take the fall for something that wasn’t his fault.” Liam was very certain of that.

Paige’s brow dipped in thought. “Maybe he felt sorry for Reva. She was just a kid. There was nothing he or she could do to bring back the kids who died. If Pope had been in danger of going to jail, it might have been different, but he was never charged with anything.”

Liam brooded over it. “That sounds like Sam,” he said finally. “He always wanted to think the best of people. It was part of what made him such a good friend. Maybe he was waiting for her to come forward.”

“Who would he have told?”

“At one time, he and I were tight. I think he would have come to me, but we lost touch.” Liam shook his head at his neglect of their friendship. “I joined the army, then Delta. After graduating from college and medical school, Sam started his research. We both promised that we’d catch up someday, but it never happened. And then he got sick.”

“What about his brother? Would Sam have told him?”

“Jerry was more than six years younger than Sam, so they were never even in the same school.”

“Sam knew he was dying,” Paige said slowly. “Maybe he didn’t want to take that secret with him and decided he had to tell someone. Who better to tell than his brother?”

“It makes sense. Could Jerry have had the brains to pull it off?”

“Blackmail doesn’t take brains so much as cunning and the willingness to do what most of us would consider unthinkable.”

Liam thought about it. “How do we find out?”

Paige leaned in close. “Here’s what we do.”

“I don’t like it,” Liam said after Paige shared her plan with him.

“You don’t have to like it,” Paige said, her patience straining. She and Liam had been over this again and again. “You only have to go along with it. Just like I did with you when you were meeting Reva.”

“Playing dirty,” he muttered.

“It’s simple. I call Jerry, say that I have something important to tell him. He invites me over and I give him my proposition—either he pays me or I go to the police with the information that he was the blackmailer. If we’re right about him, he’ll go along with it. Or he’ll try to stop me. If he doesn’t react, then we know we’re on the wrong track, but I’m pretty sure we’re right.”

“And you think he’s just going to let you waltz in and accuse him of blackmail?”

“No. I think he’s going to deny it, then finally admit that I’m right. Just like with Reva, he’ll want to boast about how smart he was, how he’d fooled everyone. I’ve got a digital recorder in a pin that I’ll wear.”

“Why don’t I do it?”

“Because he’ll be suspicious of you. Me?” She lifted her shoulders in a dismissive shrug. “I’m just a woman.”

“I still don’t like it.”

“I’ll be fine.” She knew he was worried and did her best to help him see this was the only way. “We don’t have any real proof to connect Jerry to the blackmail except a hunch. We need a confession. Once we have something to