COLD CASE AT CAMDEN CROSSING Read Free

I’m here only to clean up this place so I can put it on the market. I don’t intend to stick around.”
    Chaz heard the anger and hurt in her voice and also recognized underlying guilt. God knows, he’d blamed himself enough.
    He was Ruth’s big brother. He should have been able to keep her safe.
    If only he’d been closer to his sister, known what was going on in her head. Some folks thought she and Peyton had run off together, maybe with boys they’d met somewhere.
    But others believed they’d been kidnapped.
    Tawny-Lynn turned to her SUV, raised the trunk door and reached for her suitcase. He automatically reached for it himself, and their hands touched. A frisson of something sparked between them, taking him off guard.
    She must have felt it, too, because her eyes widened in alarm. “I can handle it, Chaz.”
    “Tawny-Lynn,” he said, his voice gruff.
    Her shoulders tensed. “What?”
    What could he say? “I’m sorry for the way things went down back then.”
    Anguish flickered on her face before she masked it. “Everyone was hurting, Chaz. Grieving. In shock.”
    The fact that she was making excuses for the way people treated her proved she was compassionate. Still, she’d been wronged, and obviously hadn’t overcome that pain.
    “Did you ever remember anything else?” he asked, then immediately regretted pushing her when she dropped the suitcase and grabbed the handle.
    “No. If I did, don’t you think I would have told someone?”
    That was the question that plagued him. Some speculated that she’d helped Ruth and Peyton run away, while others believed she’d seen the kidnapper and kept quiet out of fear.
    Of course, Dr. Riggins said she had amnesia caused from the accident.
    So if she had seen the kidnapper, the memory was locked in her head.
    * * *
    H E PULLED THE file with the photos from the bus crash from his locked desk and flipped through the pictures from the newspaper. The bus driver, fifty-nine-year-old Trevor Jergins, had died instantly when he’d crashed through the front window as the bus had careened over the ridge.
    The pictures of the team were there, too. Seventeen-year-old Joan Marx, fifteen-year-old Cassie Truman and sixteen-year-old Aubrey Pullman. All players on the high school softball team.
    All girls who died in that crash.
    Then there was Ruth and Peyton...
    And Tawny-Lynn.
    She’d had a concussion and hadn’t remembered anything about the accident seven years ago. Had she remembered something since?
    Now that she was back in town, would she expose him for what he’d done?
    No...he couldn’t let that happen. If she started to cause trouble, he’d have to get rid of her.
    He’d made it this long without anyone knowing. He didn’t intend to go to jail now.

Chapter Two
    Tawny-Lynn bounced her suitcase up the rickety porch steps, her pulse clamoring. Good heavens. She’d had a crush on Chaz Camden when she was sixteen, but she thought she’d buried those feelings long ago.
    He was even more good-looking now. Those teenage muscles had developed into a powerful masculine body that had thrown her completely off guard.
    He looked good in a uniform, too.
    Don’t go there. You have to clean this wreck of a place up and get the hell out of town.
    The door screeched when she jammed the metal key in the lock and pushed it open. Dust motes rose and swirled in the hazy light streaming in through the windows, which looked like they hadn’t been cleaned in a decade.
    But the clutter inside was even worse. Newspapers, magazines, mail and bills overflowed the scarred oak coffee table and kitchen table. Her father had always been messy and had liked to collect junk, even to the point of buying grab bags at the salvage store, but his habit had turned into hoarding. Every conceivable space on the counter was loaded down with canned goods, boxes of assorted junk, beer cans, liquor bottles and, of all things, oversize spice containers.
    Odd for a man who never cooked.
    Junk boxes of