Shattered Secrets Read Free Page A

recalled of her father he was always shouting. She figured that bottled-up anger—his blaming Mom for not taking his “terrific, terrible Teresa” with her the day she was kidnapped—was the reason he’d left them. Several months after Tess came back home, he’d moved to Oregon, had remarried and hadn’t seen his three Midwest daughters since. Char and Kate said he wasn’t worth so much as a free weekend cell phone call or a Tweet, but Tess wasn’t so sure.
    Before she could keep a lid on the past from starting to spill out like worms from a can, she remembered another voice shouting. “You darn little, crazy tomboy, get out of that corn, or you’ll get lost!” That’s what Gabe McCord had bellowed at her that awful day. And then, even standing there, staring out at the field, her memories stopped, just like someone slamming the lid back on. Thank God, she thought. Because if her thoughts got loose, they turned to nightmares filled with monsters, turned to terror....
    Tess strode from the back door to the front one, checking the locks again, then tested all the windows to be sure they were bolted. Her mom had had the locks installed to protect Char and Kate after Tess was taken, though nothing bad ever happened to them. Tess nearly stumbled over her suitcase, then remembered her food sacks and the cooler she and Gracie had carried in. She’d better unpack for her short stay.
    She jumped as headlights slashed across the dining room windows from the driveway. Was Gracie back already?
    Her heart thudding to match the thunder outside, Tess peered out the dining room window. It was very dark for not being that late yet. A black car, not Gracie’s, killed its lights. She certainly wasn’t going to answer the door, but the man who got out had seen all the lights on, so she could hardly hide.
    She gasped as she saw light catch the silver and gold printing on the car door as it opened. A man, broad-shouldered and tall with a brimmed black hat, got out. She heard the car door slam. She realized it must be the last man on earth she wanted to see.

2
    T he badge on the man’s jacket glinted silver in the outside floodlight as he approached the back door and knocked. The sound rattled Tess. But she stepped forward to unlock it, then opened only the inside door so the glass storm door was still fastened between them.
    “Sheriff Gabe McCord, Tess. Just wanted to welcome you back,” he said in a loud, deep voice that carried well over the rain and through the glass barrier between them. His big-brimmed hat shadowed his face, and his jacket was slick with rain.
    She knew she should ask him in. But she had the feeling that if she opened the door, she’d be opening up so much more. No, she had to be sensible, stay sane. This was the here and now, not two decades ago. She unlatched and opened the storm door.
    “I appreciate that,” she told him, relieved her voice sounded steady. “Do you want to step in?”
    “Thanks. Just for a sec. Grace mentioned you’d be here today. Sorry to lose them as neighbors,” he said, sweeping his hat off his head as he entered the kitchen, making it seem so much smaller. “I see you’ve got a sign up in the front yard already.”
    “Yes, I brought it with me. I put it up when Gracie and I were unloading my car.”
    She took two steps back. Gabriel McCord was so much taller and sturdier than the skinny kid she remembered. Unlike most people of Appalachian descent, Gabe was black-haired, although he was blue-eyed. She could see the young boy in his features but barely. He seemed all hard lines and tense angles—the slash of his dark eyebrows; the sharp slant of his shadowed, clean-shaven cheekbones, his square chin with a scar, his broad nose, even his solidly built body. His hands, which held his hat, were big with blunt fingers. He had a deep, commanding voice that, even when he spoke quietly, reverberated through her.
    She tried not to stare, to say something light and polite. As he