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

“Julia, where are you?” His voice was filled with static. She checked her coverage and only had one bar. “Liam and Marcus are at the Taylor residence and you aren’t. Everything okay?”

She paused. Was she willing to share what she’d seen...or thought she saw? And really, should Julia be shirking her responsibilities? Sitting taller in the seat, she chose her direction. “I think I passed Robert Carpenter on the highway.”

“What? Where? License plate? Make and model of the vehicle?”

“That’s just it—I was going fast and just caught a glimpse. It was a sedan, I think. Gray or silver.”

“That doesn’t give us a lot to go on,” he said, his words choppy as the coverage faded in and out.

“By the location and the direction he’s heading, I know where he’s going,” said Julia. “He’s heading home—that or to Darcy’s old house. Either way, I have to check it out. Bring backup, just in case.” She waited a beat. Then another. “Luis? Luis?” Glancing at her phone, she cursed. “Lost signal,” she muttered.

But what had Luis heard? Would he know where to go? Or that she even needed backup at all?

CHAPTER 19

Luis gripped his phone and cursed. “Dropped call.”

He stood on the sidewalk, at the exact spot where Sean Reynolds’s body had been discovered earlier this morning. The corpse had been taken to the morgue, but Luis was still mapping out the scene. After Travis Cooper had been shot, the combined sheriff’s department and RMJ teams had split in two.

As he’d told Julia on the phone, Marcus and Liam were looking for Christopher Booth, which left Wyatt and Luis in town.

“What’s up?” Wyatt asked.

“Julia. She thought she’d passed Robert Carpenter. Her last words—before the damn call dropped—were ‘By the location, and the direction he’s heading, I know where he’s going.’”

“I know one way to find out. C’mon. Let’s head to RMJ and see if we can’t find Julia on satellite.”

The drive to RMJ was short, and soon, Luis and Wyatt were sitting in the computer lab. Wyatt programmed a satellite—on loan to RMJ from MI6, no less—to search for Julia’s truck.

A grainy image filled the screen.

“That’s Julia’s truck, all right.”

“Now,” said Wyatt, his fingers dancing on the keyboard. “We have to figure out where she’s going.” The aspect expanded, until Julia’s truck was just a flashing red dot on a picture of pixelated mountains, highways, ranches and homesteads.

Luis rose. “I know where she’s headed,” he said, halfway to the door. “Let’s go.”

Wyatt disconnected the RMJ server from the satellite. “Where to?”

“The home of a killer.”

* * *

To keep from being seen or heard, Julia pulled off the side of the road a quarter of a mile from the Carpenter residence. Keeping to the ditch, thankfully dry, that ran between the road and the woods, Julia crept toward the house.

The roof came into view and she dropped to her belly, crawling commando-style for the last hundred yards. The scar on her stomach burned, but she let the pain provide fuel for what she needed to do next.

Even with the house, Julia crawled up the berm and peered over the edge.

Robert Carpenter, dressed as a woman—complete with a blond wig—had Peter Knowles at gunpoint. How the hell had the newspaper editor ended up as the killer’s hostage?

Robert was forcing Peter to walk away from the house and toward the woods. The reporter’s shoulder was covered in blood. He’d been shot—by Robert, no doubt.

Julia crouched in the brush. Sweat trickled from her hairline and dripped into her eyes. She wasn’t about to let Robert disappear into the woods with Peter in tow.

* * *

Peter’s shoulder throbbed. His feet were too heavy to lift. His face burned and his hands trembled with cold. Despite the fact that he wanted to lie down and never get up, he walked on.

The sparse lawn ended at a wall of trees. He knew that if he stepped into the woods, he’d never come out. But he didn’t have the energy to either fight or flee.

“Why?” he asked, his steps faltering. “Why’d you kill those men?”

“You can ask them yourself in hell,” Robert said.

“I’ve seen war, man. So don’t think that you’re going to scare me with your talk of eternal damnation.”

Robert, his blond wig askew, shoved him with the gun. Peter stumbled, but didn’t fall. “Why do you care?” he asked. “You’re going to be dead, too.”

The phone in Peter’s pocket was heavy and he wondered how long it would record before running out of battery or space. It was longer than he had, certainly. If he only had a few minutes to live, he might as well make them count. “I just want to know why. It’s all I’ve ever really wanted. I guess it’s the reason I became a reporter.” He paused. If Peter wanted to survive, he had to reach the person inside of the monster. “Is Robert in there? Can I talk to him?”

Robert’s eyes flickered, as though he was struggling to surface. Peter could only hope.

“You think that I’m going to tell you all my twisted secrets? Whatcha hoping for? That we’ll be besties when you finally croak? Dream on.”

Peter had interviewed thousands of people in his lifetime and he knew one thing to be true. Folks always liked to talk about themselves.

“Robert? Is that you?” he said, and then continued. “I heard that you dated Darcy in high school. Was that true?”

“I loved her,” said Robert. They stood in the shade of the trees. Just a few more paces and Peter would be in the woods and lost forever.

“What happened?”

“She lives right over there.” Robert pointed with his gun hand. “About two miles through the woods. Her parents didn’t want her around other kids, but I could sneak over to her house and see her. At first, we were just friends and then...”

“And then?” Peter coaxed.

Robert pushed Peter. “Keep walking.”

Peter stayed rooted to the spot. “And then what?”

Robert said nothing.

Peter took small steps. “Did she not