Touch of Betrayal, A Read Free Page B

the arm, and I almost tripped over it. I haven’t touched a thing, well, except for that patch of dirt near the trees.”
    Hayes nodded, moving away to chat with the detective in charge of the investigation.
    Pierce nudged into my personal space, probably to keep our conversation under the radar. “What’d you pick up from the ground?”
    “Not much. Harlan gardening. This area used to be filled with oriental plants, and the eucalyptus trees are trying to put down new roots.” My voice did a barely noticeable hitch. I fought it. No way was I going to cry about the loss. Not ever again. It was time to come out of hiding and find Brody Williams’s accomplice.
    Pierce stared at me. “And?”
    “The jerkwad who did this has been roaming around free because I’ve been hiding in the country, working with my clients by phone, and being a wife. No more. Hiding, I mean. The clients and wife part are good, but it’s way past time for me to face whoever killed my parents and blew up my childhood home. Unless whoever the arm is attached to…” I glanced at the cops and crime scene techs swarming over the area.
    Pierce shook his head. “This was done remotely. Whoever is buried there didn’t set off the explosion.”
    “How could you possibly know that? No one knows that.”
    His right eyebrow arched.
    “You’re sure?”
    “I was here, Everly. Went over every inch of the property with the arson investigator. A remote device was his take.”
    “Sorry. Guess I’m trying to pretend it’s gonna be all right when I know it isn’t.”
    He gave me one of his Tynan Pierce patented grunts. And then my curiosity took over. “Where have you been, Pierce, for the last year?”
    His grin lit up the ugliness of the situation, but there was something dangerous lurking behind his eyes. “Around. You gonna tell me what you really saw?”
    “Millie hid something. I don’t mean bury. I mean she skulked around this area of the garden. I haven’t had time to check anyplace else.”
    Pierce didn’t look surprised, and that shocked the heck out of me.
    “You know something about Millie and Harlan, don’t you?”
    He avoided my stare.
    I punched his arm. Yep. We were back to normal, more or less. “What aren’t you telling me?”
    “Hmm. You want to finish up here before Hayes decides to kick you off the property.”
    As a diversion, it worked really well. I stood back, closed my eyes, and tried to sense what part of the area I should touch, until the soft thud of footsteps broke my concentration.
    “All right, Everly.” It was the chief. “I’ve given everyone tasks to keep them away from the corpse. Should be clear for about two minutes.” He slapped a pair of gloves in my hand and nodded toward the hand sticking out of the ground.
    It was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. Yanking on the gloves, I hustled to the exposed arm and rested my fingertips on the sun-warm bones.
    I had no time to finesse the moment with deep breathing and centering myself, so I plunged into the first layer of images that shot through my fingertips. Not a man. She had been average height, with short brown hair, tawny eyes that held intelligence and concentration, and she moved like Tynan Pierce as she searched the garden.
    I wanted more, so I pushed into the images, scanning for more information. Jeans and a dark shirt, gloved hands, and a tote full of plant samples she’d been taking from my garden. Well, damn. Maybe my mother had been growing the poisonous plants here. But that made no sense. I’d been given free access to the entire garden during my childhood. No area had been out of bounds, nor had I ever been warned not to touch certain plants.
    Voices moved closer to me, the chief’s husky drawl a subtle warning for me to move away from the body and let law enforcement do their thing. He tapped me on the shoulder, and angled his chin toward the parking area. I stood, stripped off my gloves, and motioned Pierce to follow me so I