Her Name Was Annie by Beth Rinyu (the little red hen read aloud txt) 📕

still unresolved. I hated that my life had changed so drastically in a matter of twenty-four hours, and I hated that this man who I knew nothing about seemed to have had such a keen interest in my daughter and me.

Chapter 10

JACK WAS STILL unable to come up with any leads in the days that followed, making me more on edge than ever. “Come in!” I shouted at the top of my lungs at the knock on the front door as I hoisted the twenty-two-pound beast of a turkey from the oven.

“Where’s Kara?” Jack demanded when he entered the kitchen.

“Happy Thanksgiving to you too!” I joked.

“I’m sorry, happy Thanksgiving. Is she here?” His agitation with Kara was evident.

“She’s in the backyard with my dad and Max. What’s up?”

“The agent I have following her said she decided to take him on a little goose chase through the woods when she went on her run this morning.”

“On purpose?” I asked.

“What do you think?”

I sighed heavily and looked out the sliding glass door at Kara, sitting next to my father as he threw the tennis ball to Max, who would dutifully retrieve it. As much as I hated to admit it, that dog was growing on me. “We knew she wasn’t going to go down without a fight.”

“Well, this has to stop. I’m lucky they’re even letting me use one of my guys to do this.”

“Excuse me, but it may be because of them that we’re in the situation we’re in.”

“I don’t know, Steph. I’ve spent the last four days combing through files, and I can’t make a connection.”

My stomach clenched a little with that reminder. I was hoping this would all be resolved by the time Kara went back to school. “Have you heard any more from the detectives on the case?”

“Nothing really solid. They’re trying to get some information from the family, but they’re refusing to say much.”

“Of course they are,” I mumbled.

“What we do know is he was sixty-eight years old. He was from California, divorced over thirty years ago, and had no kids.”

“He was a long way from home.”

Jack nodded and raked his hand through his hair, appearing to be deep in thought.

“Hey, Jack,” my father greeted as he came in from the backyard.

“Walter, how are you?” Jack extended his hand to my father.

“I’m still breathing, able to walk, and everything seems to still be working upstairs.” My father tapped his index finger to his temple. “So I guess I’m pretty good for an old man.”

Jack chuckled with his smile quickly fading when Kara entered with Max right behind her.

“Hey, Daddy! Happy Thanksgiving!” Kara exclaimed.

“Kara, can you please explain to me why you decided to go for a run in the woods today?” Jack demanded.

“Umm…because I sometimes like to change things up when I’m running.”

I smacked her hand out the way when she began to pick at the marshmallows of my sweet potato casserole. I glanced at my father, who seemed puzzled by the conversation. I had told him about what had happened that day on the beach, but I didn’t fill him in on the rest of it to avoid him unnecessary worry. I was wishing I could steer the conversation in a different direction just so he wouldn’t find out, but Jack’s annoyance with Kara wasn’t going to allow for that to happen.

“Kara, all I’m asking is that you cooperate for now. It’s not going to be for the rest of your life.”

My father took a seat at the kitchen table. “Did you want something to drink, Dad?” I asked, hoping to take him out of Kara and Jack’s conversation.

He held up his hand and shook his head. “What’s this all about?”

I glanced at Jack, unsure of how to respond, but Kara beat me to it.

“Oh, they found photos of Mom and me in the hotel room of the man who drowned. So now Dad is freaking out because he thinks some psychopath is after us. When clearly, the psychopath is dead.” Leave it to Kara to put it all out there and not try and sugarcoat it even a little. Sometimes—actually, a lot of times, she could be brutally honest. Most of the time, I admired her for that. This was not one of those times, especially when I saw the fear that shrouded my father’s face.

“What the hell is going on, Jack?” my father asked.

“We don’t know yet. I’m trying to find out if this guy could be connected to one of my old cases, but so far it doesn’t appear that way. So, for the time being I have someone making sure Kara is okay when she goes for a run in the woods.” Jack’s explanation seemed to do very little to calm my father’s fears.

“Do you think there may be someone else involved besides this person who drowned?” My father continued with his quest for answers.

“I really don’t know.” Jack seemed defeated in his reply, and with that, so did I. If he couldn’t find a connection to this man, would we ever know why he had those photos? Was Kara right? Did it end with the man in the ocean or would we constantly be needing to look over our shoulders? My mind was reeling in a million different directions. In a way I envied Kara for being so lackadaisical over the whole thing, but with age came wisdom, and my forty-something self was more aware than my twenty-something self would’ve ever been. Kara was still so young, and as much as I hated to admit it, naïve. I saw so much of myself in her when I was that age. She hadn’t experienced enough in life to become cynical or even distressed about certain things. She still had the world at her feet, and in her world, nothing could ever affect that. I was hoping that to be true and that nothing would change, but as someone who had a whole lifetime of experience, I couldn’t help but worry over the