Finger Prints Read Free Page B

business world in favor of a life of ease, and now his summers were spent as the golf pro at a suburban Omaha club, his winters in a similar role in Arizona.
    “Will you go to Phoenix this year?” Carly asked.
    “I’m planning to head there for several weeks after I see you in New York.”
    New York. Thanksgiving. Carly had been looking forward to it ever since she’d come east. Now it was barely three weeks away. She felt excited, and sad. More than anything, she would have liked to have gone home. But it wasn’t to be, not for a while, at least. Swallowing the lump in her throat, she forced a brightness to her voice that told only half the story. “I’m really looking forward to it, dad. It seems so long.” Gritting her teeth, she fought the tears in her eyes. She wasn’t usually this sensitive, or rather, she was usually better able to hide her sensitivity. Whether this lapse had been caused by the afternoon’s fright or simply the approach of the holidays, she wasn’t sure.
    “Are you all right, sweetheart?” her father asked quickly.
    She squeezed her eyes shut. A small tear trickled from each corner. “Sure,” she managed to reply. “I’m okay.” She hadn’t wanted to do this. Her father would know in a second that she was not okay. It was perhaps one of the reasons they’d always been close. He could read her well.
    “You sound as though you’re on the verge of tears.”
    Unfortunately she’d passed that point. Her eyes were brimming now, her cheeks growing wetter by the minute. She should have waited to call, she chided herself belatedly. But she’d needed him.
    “I’m sorry,” she whispered, muffling the receiver against her mouth. “I guess…it’s just….” What was it? Fear? Loneliness? A simple need to be held? Dissolving into silent weeping, she couldn’t say a word.
    Her father seemed to understand. “It’s all right, sweetheart,” he crooned, his voice, despite its under-current of pain, gently soothing her as his arms might have done had he been there. “You just let it out. We all need to do it sometimes.”
    “I’m sorry…I didn’t mean…to burden you….”
    “Burden me?” he countered with such tenderness that the flow of her tears only increased. “You’re my daughter. I love you. And you’ve never in your life been a burden to me.”
    “But…all this….” She sniffled, waving her arm in a comprehensive arc her father could only imagine. “How did…I ever get myself…in such a mess?”
    With a gentle, “Shh” every so often, her father waited until her quiet sobs subsided. “Don’t berate yourself, sweetheart,” he began. “I’m so very proud of you. We all are. You faced the worst of danger, yet you went out on a limb for something you believed in.”
    “I know,” she whispered, extracting a tissue from its box on the kitchen counter. “But I sometimes…wonder what good it does. Sure, Barber and Culbert are serving time, but I feel as though I’m the one being…punished.” Pausing, she dabbed her eyes. “If only I’d listened to the others. They told me not to push it.”
    “It had to be pushed, sweetheart. Arson is a crime. People died in those fires.”
    Oh, yes. People did die. She winced at the finality of it. “I know,” she murmured, and she did. All too well. She also knew that, given the same circumstances, she would do it all again. Yet she couldn’t contain the note of bitterness in her voice. Only with her father could she vent it. She could count on him to love her nonetheless. “It’s just that there are times when I wish it had been someone else who’d been hellbent on righting the wrongs of the world. There are times when I don’t like the consequences I’m stuck with, times when I feel so alone.”
    “You’ve got friends, haven’t you?” her father asked. “I can’t imagine you teaching at that school of yours without meeting people.”
    “Oh, yes, I’ve got friends. But it’s