Page 98 of Run for Her Life

She stood up. Her small frame seemed to fill the room now. “I know what you’ve been doing. Adam reached out to me and made a deal. Inside scoop on our monumentally messed-up family in exchange for not helping you bring down my company.”

His eyes grew large and his body went rigid. “Mother…”

A throng of men in suits and jackets blasted inside the room. The man leading the charge walked straight up to David. “David Harrington, you’re under arrest for your involvement in a scheme to manipulate the stock price of a publicly traded company. You are being charged with market manipulation, securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit fraud in violation of federal law.”

Dawn tuned out the FBI agent as he recited David his Miranda rights. She turned her back on her son as he was dragged away and out of her life for good.

Now it was just her and her daughter.

It wasn’t often that Zoe visited Rachel’s grave. In true Rachel fashion, her mother had wanted to be buried somewhere where it rained and stormed often. Zoe knew her mother had roots in Washington State. She also wondered how the hell they were related when they had nothing in common—except for their patience for tolerating Gina.

The sky hung low and heavy, a thick sheet of gray that pressed down like a weight. Water pooled in uneven patches along the winding cemetery path, reflecting the bare trees that stood like brittle skeletons brushing against the dull afternoon light.

She wrapped her coat around her, moving deliberately through the rows of headstones.

Her boots sank slightly into the wet soil. Her stomach was still tender. The stitches that held together her skin throbbed and stretched with every step she took. In Zoe’s time with the FBI, she had never once been shot. Now that a hole that been drilled through her stomach, she felt like a part of her was gone forever.

A roll of thunder and it started to drizzle. Names, dates, etched words of remembrance blurred under the streaks of water running down the marble like old tears. When she reached a small, plain headstone wedged between two more elaborate stones, her feet stopped moving.

Her breath stuck in her throat. Her eyes fixed on a bouquet of yellow roses resting against Rachel’s headstone.

Who was here?

She looked around, but the cemetery was empty. Just rows and rows of stone on a green carpet, not a single shadow in sight on this rainy day. Yellow roses were Rachel’s favorite flower. Who would visit Rachel? Gina was back in Vermont and Rachel didn’t have any other family or friends—certainly no one who knew she was buried in Lakemore.

“Who’s there?” she called out, her voice bouncing back to her. The only reply was the wind, shifting, moving, whispering through the empty spaces.

Her breath fogged as she bent down to pick up the bouquet; the flowers were now soaked in rainwater. There was no card. But there was something else.

Origami. A yellow paper folded into the shape of a dove, inconspicuous and blending with the roses.

She pulled it out and opened it.

Her heart thundered inside her chest.

Viper is coming for you.

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