Uncaged Read Free Page A

wonderfully. Only he came back and started asking awkward questions, and that was lucky for me because you were exposed for the cheat you are. The only thing that amazes me is that you contented yourself with hiding the statement. Why not destroy it while you had the chance? Or would that have been too dangerous for you? I suppose you prefer your corruption to be nice and safe.”
    “Stop this,” he said desperately. “I didn’t hide the statement because I didn’t know about it.”
    She looked at him derisively. “You can do better than that. Constable Dutton handed it to you himself.”
    “Maybe he did. I don’t know. I only know that I have no recollection of it.”
    “And I suppose you have no recollection of scribbling something on it? It was your handwriting.”
    “Yes, but—”
    “And the way it got conveniently lost—hidden away in a file belonging to another case. I suppose you have ‘no recollection’ of that, either?”
    “None at all. When it was found in that file I was as amazed as anybody, I swear it.”
    She actually smiled with incredulity that he should try to fool her with such a feeble story. “I don’t know why you came here, but you’re wasting your time,” she said firmly.
    “I came because I have to know the truth.”
    “Has the truth suddenly become important to you after all this time?” she asked sarcastically. “What use is it to tell you the truth? You don’t believe it when you hear it. You really came because you want me to confess, then you’d feel all right, wouldn’t you? And the force might take you back.”
    “It wouldn’t make me feel all right to know you’re guilty,” he said harshly. “That would mean I’d made my case so clumsily that a murderess was freed too soon. Did I do that? Or did I jail an innocent woman? Either way, it’s just as bad.”
    “Your arrogance is beyond belief,” she snapped. “‘Just as bad’? It may make no difference to you which way it turns out, but what about me? I don’t matter, do I? To you I’m just part of an academic exercise in finding out which way your guilt lies. But I’m not. I’m a human being, and you’ve ruined my life. I didn’t kill anyone, but because you made it look as if I did, they took my son away. Because of you I can’t get to see him, even now. If my ex-husband has his way, I’ll never see him again, and it’s all because of you. ”
    Her voice rose to a scream as her nerves finally snapped, and she flew at him. For three dreary years she’d longed to inflict on him a fraction of the pain he’d caused her, and now he was here. She lashed out blindly, striking, clawing at his face, driven by uncontrollable fury.
    Daniel backed up, raising his hands as a shield. What he saw in her face appalled him. Through his job he was used to witnessing despair and misery, but this was worse. It was as though Megan was too demented with anguish to know what she did. Some instinct made him stop trying to push her away and pull her against him, tightening his arms around her so that she was trapped. “Let me go,” she screamed.
    “I will when you stop trying to attack me,” he said, speaking breathlessly for she was still thrashing about. “I just want us to talk.”
    “The only words I want to say to you are words of hate,” Megan snapped. “Is that clear enough?”
    But she was too exhausted to keep it up. The roller coaster was at work again, carrying her to the peak of rage only to plunge her back down into the depths. Suddenly she went limp in his arms and started to shake, not with anger but with grief. Daniel felt the violent trembling of her body against his own and it went through him like a pain. He knew what it was like to suffer like that, to curse heaven in bitterness and misery, and realize that cursing changed nothing. The loved one had gone, and the world was still a dark, barren place to be endured.
    Sounds were coming from her, not weeping, but a kind of half-gasping moan, like