In the Shadow of Vengeance Read Free Page A

talk herself out of what would be the second stupidest thing she did that day, she opened the car door and got behind the wheel. Wrapping the seat belt around her and Erin, she pulled out of the driveway and drove back the way she had come. The words
just borrowing the car
seeped across her consciousness. She never glanced back as she headed toward the highway.
    Even though the road was covered in cornstalks and wreckage, she made it to the interstate and headed toward Omaha. The closer she got to the city, the less storm damage there was.
    Elizabeth had a choice to make. She could take the beltway around the city and head due east toward her childhood home. Her parents would know what to do, and she had never needed them more than at that moment. But at the turnoff, instead of taking the exit east, the fear of bringing this nightmare to her parents’ door compelled her to take the exit for downtown instead. She drove several blocks and slowed when she reached a ten-story white building she had always been curious about but never had any reason to visit. Entering the short driveway, she drove up to the guarded gate. Behind the iron gates was a large insignia that hung on the side of the building: Federal Bureau of Investigation.
    Elizabeth turned off the car and unbuckled her seatbelt. Glancing down at her soiled, wet clothing, she ran a hand over her hair and tried not to look like she felt: unbalanced. The guard approached her as she got out of the car.
    “Ma’am, you need to stay in the car.”
    She cleared her throat as she zoomed in on the guard’s hand moving toward the handgun at his side. “Tornado … not sure where,” she blared out in a strained whisper. “I had to borrow this car. It’s not mine. I don’t know what happened to my car.”
    “Ma’am, are you hurt? The baby you’re holding …?”
    Elizabeth touched her lips to the top of her child’s head. “Erin’s my daughter. I need to talk to someone. There’s been a murder.” She sucked in a deep breath. “I think it’s a murder, not sure … I’m not sure of anything.”

Chapter Two
    Thirteen years later
    Fells Point, Baltimore
    How did he always get himself drawn into other people’s messes? Noah McNeil had his own problems and this wasn’t one of them. If thirteen-year-old Danny Merlot was acting out, then let his mother deal with it.
    While that logic made perfect sense to him, his nosy sister-in-law had other ideas. How she always got him into this crap bugged the hell out of him. All Jennie McKenzie McNeil, his twin brother Jared’s wife, had to do was put on that schoolteacher face, promise Noah a batch of homemade chocolate-chip cookies, and he was her puppet. Today, she wanted him to check on one of her former students. And since he and Danny had a little history, maybe Danny would open up to Noah when he didn’t seem to be talking to anyone else.
    Danny Merlot was a McNeil problem. It had been more than three years since Elías Mendoza’s enforcer kidnapped the kid from inside Jennie’s elementary school. Mendoza’s personal vendetta against Jennie and the McNeil family should have never landed on Danny’s young shoulders. Mendoza chose Danny out of Jennie’s students because he knew she had a soft spot in her heart for the boy—the perfect leverage.
    Noah leaned his long frame against the side of his truck and scanned the block. Since Jennie married Jared three years ago, this section of Fells Point was almost home to him more than his own place. He glanced at his watch. An instant later, the sound of St. Luke’s church bells echoed through the neighborhood. The bells were followed by his stomach grumbling. The aroma of garlicky, well-seasoned tomato sauce and pizza dough cooking on an open brick oven that wafted across the street from the Italian bistro always made his mouth water. If he didn’t expect Danny to be walking past on the way home from school, he would grab a slice.
    “Hey,
amigo
. Are you going to lean