Page 9 of Beyond Her Reach (Bree Taggert #10)

She’d taken this parenting/guardianship job under the worst possible circumstances: her sister’s murder.

The kids’ biological father was worse than useless.

Not only had he not had anything to do with them for most of their lives, he was a criminal currently serving time for fraud.

The first few months after Erin’s death had been hell on all of them.

Juggling her own grief and helping two young kids navigate the loss of their mom was the hardest thing Bree had ever done.

And soon she’d have to let go of one of them.

She suspected that might be just as hard.

Clearing her throat, she packed away her feelings until her therapy session later in the week.

Luke was not her therapist. It wasn’t his job to handle her emotions.

He should be able to enjoy his journey with no guilt over Bree’s sadness.

She would not ruin this for him. She would deal with her own shit.

She’d always known that parenting was the hardest job in the world, but until she’d actually been responsible for the well-being of two young humans, she hadn’t appreciated the sheer amount of sacrifice it would require.

After dinner, Dana stood and brushed her short, gray-and-blond hair back from her face. “I have a date. Someone else will have to do the dishes.”

“We’re going to the library.” Kayla shoved back her chair and sprinted out of the room.

“Luke and I have got this.” Matt stood. “Tell Nolan hey for me.”

Dana was currently in a relationship with Matt’s older brother.

“Thank you.” Bree helped clear the table while she waited for Kayla.

Matt gave her a look. “You don’t have to thank me for possessing and performing basic life skills. If you’re going to thank anyone, make it my mother, who insisted I be self-sufficient.”

The little girl returned, lugging a loaded tote bag, the weight of which rendered her lopsided.

Bree relieved her of it. How did the kid even carry it? “This bag weighs as much as you do.” They donned coats and went out the back door. “How many books do you have in here?”

“Seven.” Kayla skipped toward the SUV. “If I don’t like one, it’s good to have another ready. I always have a book with me. Just in case.”

“In case of what?”

“An emergency.” Kayla fastened her seat belt. “Actually, I like to have two books, in case I finish the one I’m reading.”

“I get it. I was a bookworm when I was your age.”

Bree drove to the library, barely ten minutes away.

She took Kayla’s hand to cross the parking lot.

As they walked through the sliding glass doors, Bree had a flashback that weakened her knees.

Bree was maybe eight. She looked up. Her mom had her by the hand.

She was young and beautiful, smiling down at her.

Bree could feel the warmth of her mother’s palm.

Hot air from the heat vents near the door blasted on her cold cheeks.

A sudden chill swept over Bree as she knew—somehow—that this memory was from shortly before it had happened.

“Aunt Bree?”

Bree shook herself.

Kayla stared up at her, her thin face scrunched in a slightly quizzical expression. “Are you Ok ?”

“Yeah.” Bree almost brushed it off. No. Memories of her mother had been surfacing over the past months, and not just the nightmare ones of the night she’d died that had haunted Bree her entire life.

The night her father had murdered her mother, then turned the gun on himself while Bree hid her younger siblings under the porch.

She waited for the nightmare to take over.

For the shock of the first gunshot, the panic of trying to suppress her baby brother’s cries, listening for the sound of his boots, the terror of waiting for him to find them.

To kill them.

But this time, the recollection of her mother’s death didn’t immediately block out all other memories.

She could still feel the squeeze of her mother’s fingers, hear the sound of her voice as she said, Go on to the kids’ section.

I’ll catch up. Horror didn’t take over. Bree’s brain simply let her experience a good memory, a bit of her childhood that was actually pleasant. She’d forgotten most of those moments.

She gave Kayla’s hand a little squeeze. “I used to come to the library with my mother when I was your age.”

“Really?”

“Yep. I loved books. To me, they felt like friends.” Bree’s childhood had been a violent storm to weather. Her father’s unpredictable rage had rolled in like thunder, and his fists had lashed out as quick as lightning.

“They are friends,” Kayla said, obviously delighted with the comparison.

For much of Bree’s childhood, before and after it happened, books had been her only friends. She’d hidden herself in their pages, taken refuge in their worlds, escaped her own miserable life.

“I’ll return these.” Bree lifted the bag. “You only have about thirty minutes until closing. Do you know what you want?”

“Yes!” Kayla skipped across the worn commercial carpet.

Bree stacked the books on the return counter and exchanged a polite greeting with the librarian as she collected the books.

Bree turned to look for Kayla, and her eyes fell on a cluster of tables in the center of the space.

She could clearly see her mother sitting at one of the tables.

An older woman sat across from her. The woman had a file open in front of her.

The two women were bent close, clearly having a hushed and hurried conversation.

Bree’s mom kept raising her head and looking around, her posture that of someone waiting to get caught.

Was she afraid Daddy was going to find her? That he’d followed her? Daddy’s voice played inside Bree’s head. You be back by eight, you hear?

Her mom’s face snapped around, as if she felt eyes on her, her own eyes full of fear, like a prey animal.

Relief relaxed her features as she spotted child-Bree and stood.

The older woman leaned across the table and said something, grabbing Bree’s mom’s jacket sleeve to stop her from leaving.

The child-Bree would not have recognized the urgency in her body language, but the adult-detective Bree did.

Her mother shook her head and brushed off the woman’s grip.

The older woman sat back, disconcerted, frustrated.

Worried.

“I’m ready, Aunt Bree.” Kayla’s voice startled Bree out of the memory, but she held on to it. The little girl shoved a stack of books onto the checkout counter.

“You have more books than you returned.”

“I know!” Kayla grinned.

Bree carried the heavy book bag to the SUV and drove home. They went in the back door. The scent of lasagna lingered in the warm kitchen.

Kayla tossed her jacket at a peg on the wall and missed. “I can’t wait to start my new book.”

Bree hung her own jacket and retrieved Kayla’s from the floor.

Kayla lugged her even heavier bag of books toward the steps.

Bree called after her, “Shower first!”

Once Kayla started reading, the child lost all track of time.

“ Ok .” The child thundered up the steps, her footfalls sounding more like those of a mini horse than a small human.

The kitchen was empty. Luke’s light had been on, so he was probably studying. Dana wasn’t home yet. The dishwasher hummed softly as Bree made a cup of tea and headed for the home office.

Matt sat behind the desk, hunched over his laptop. “How’d it go?”

“Good.” Bree told him about the memory.

Matt leaned back, his brows knitted. “What do you think it means?”

“I don’t know—yet. Maybe nothing.” But she instantly knew dismissing the memory was the wrong move. It had resurfaced for a reason. “But somehow it felt ...” She searched for the right word. “Significant. I can’t explain why.”

“You don’t have to,” Matt said. “It’s a decades-old memory. Does it matter how long it takes for you to sort out what it might mean?”

“No, and good point. It can marinate for a while.” She sat down in the chair facing him and opened her messenger bag to slide her own laptop onto the other side of the desk. “What are you doing?”

“Basic google and social media searches on Kelly and Harrison Gibson. Jeff Burke and Marina Maxwell are next.”

“Find anything interesting?”

“Possibly.” He stroked his beard. “I can’t find Kelly on social media at all, and I’ve tried the four major services.”

“What about Jeff Burke?” Bree asked.

“No social media,” Matt said.

“Makes sense, considering his distrust of technology.”

“Yep,” Matt said. “But that isn’t the most interesting thing.”

“No?”

He shook his head. “The woman Harrison has been dating? Marina Maxwell? She’s been his social media friend ”—Matt emphasized the word with air quotes—“for over a year. There’s even a picture of them together.”

“Which is several months before he and Kelly split up,” Bree mused. “So, your liar liar, pants on fire suspicion was accurate.”

“I have a knack for smelling bullshit.” Matt closed his laptop. “I wonder what else Harrison could have been less than truthful about.”

“Once someone lies, it’s hard to believe anything they say.”