Serial Bride Read Free Page B

down. Piled behind it were copies of old newspaper articles. Sylvie flipped through the first few, twenty-year-old articles detailing Kane’s brutal murders of blond college coeds and his circus of a trial. Behind those were articles half that old telling the story of his prison marriage to the misguided Dixie Madsen and their notorious escape and recapture. More recent articles poked out from underneath in the original newsprint.
    Bryce pointed to the photocopies on the top of the stack. “These look like they were made from microfilm.”
    â€œMicrofilm? Like from a library?”
    â€œYeah. See how a few of them are in negative? That happens with some machines. And the library is one of the few places she could get her hands on articles this old.”
    â€œWhy would she copy all these articles?”
    Bryce didn’t know, but he had his suspicions. Of course, he wasn’t about to share them with Sylvie Hayes. “Whatever the reason, she had to be pretty dedicated. It takes a lot of time to go through microfilm.”
    A piece of paper stuck out from behind the stack of articles: an envelope addressed to Diana Gale, complete with canceled stamp and postmarked last month.
    Bryce’s heart pounded so hard he could feel each beat in his throat. “Is that a letter?”
    Sylvie let the copied article she was reading fall back into the folder and reached for the envelope.
    A loud thump sounded from the other room. “Police,” a muffled voice shouted from the hall. “Open the door. We have a warrant to search the premises.”
    Bryce met Sylvie’s desperate eyes. They’d barely scratched the surface. He needed to study the folder, to find out exactly what Diana Gale saw fit to collect, what she knew about Kane, and when she knew it. And most of all, he needed to read that letter. If it was from Kane and he had sent it last month, it might give him everything he needed to prove that for whatever reason, Diana Gale had acted as Dryden Kane’s conduit to the outside world. And that at Kane’s bequest, she had arranged Ty’s murder.
    Sylvie stuffed the letter back into the folder, snapped the cover shut and thrust up from the chair. “I’m not giving them this folder.”
    His feelings exactly. But there wasn’t much they could do to keep it. Not with the police right outside. “What are you planning to do?”
    â€œI don’t know. But I can’t just hand this over to Detective Perreth. He’ll only use it to twist things, to blame everything on Diana, not to find out what happened to her.”
    â€œIf the police believe as you say, taking this folder amounts to removing evidence. It’s a criminal action.”
    â€œI don’t care. It might be my only chance to find Diana. To find the truth.”
    And Bryce’s only chance to find out who helped Dryden Kane murder his brother. A chill wound down Bryce’s throat and lodged in his gut.
    Sylvie ran her hands over her gown. “I was going to change clothes. Why didn’t I change clothes?”
    There was no room in that dress to smuggle afolder, that was for damn sure. The chill inside him grew until the walls of his stomach ached from it.
    Sylvie dropped her hands to her sides and started for the door. “I’ll throw it in my suitcase. I’ll say I came to pack my clothes.”
    â€œNo good. If this Detective Perreth has a brain in his head, he’ll ask to search your suitcase before he lets you cross the threshold.”
    Another thump sounded on the door. The jangle of keys reached them.
    Sylvie looked around the room like a trapped animal. “What am I going to do?”
    Warmth leached from his veins, chills circulating through his body. He was an officer of the court. He couldn’t interfere with a legal search warrant. He couldn’t risk his livelihood, his freedom.
    He couldn’t.
    But could he just surrender the folder? Could he