Vulnerable (Morgans of Nashville) Read Free Page A

had been half in love with Annie. When Annie’s murder case was reopened two years ago, the media had elevated the singer to the likes of James Dean or Patsy Cline. Beautiful, talented, and stolen from the world before her star could fully rise. Dozens still approached her to share their stories of Annie, who was loved by so many. Georgia always smiled and thanked them.
    Freddie patted his flat palm over the inlaid wood of his guitar. “Don’t be a stranger. Everyone likes having you here.”
    Laughter rumbled in her chest as she reached behind an amplifier and grabbed her purse. “Flattery wins my heart every time. But I’m not a singer. Catching bad guys is what charges my batteries. See you, sugar.”
    Georgia was a forensic technician with the Nashville Police Department. She had been on the job nearly a decade and had proven herself to be detailed and driven. The consummate professional in the courtroom whom defense attorneys could not rattle.
    She cut through the crowd, pausing to accept a couple of good wishes. She was never good with receiving compliments or attention, so she smiled, thanked everyone like her parents taught her and kept moving with no real need to strike up a conversation.
    She moved up to the bar where KC Kelly, a tall, bald, broad-shouldered man wearing a Hawaiian shirt, polished a set of whiskey glasses fresh from the dishwasher. KC had been her late father’s partner in homicide for over twenty-five years. When he retired, he bought Rudy’s from the previous owner who had created a place where tourists and locals flocked to hear the up-and-coming talent. When KC took over the honky-tonk, cops initially came to show support for one of their own. Many discovered they liked Rudy’s and that KC could really run a bar. And so the tourists, locals, and cops kept returning to the safest South Broadway bar in Nashville.
    “Did good tonight, kid,” he said. “The crowd loved you.” He pushed a fresh glass with ice and diet soda toward her.
    She took a long sip. “Thanks for letting me share the stage. The day job has been crazy lately, and I haven’t had much time. It was fun.”
    “So I hear big brother gave you a cold case,” KC said.
    Big brother was Deke Morgan, who now ran the Nashville Police Homicide Department. He was joined by her other brother, Rick Morgan, who also worked in the same unit. Third brother, Alex, was the outlier. He worked for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, or TBI.
    “I should be more careful when I ask for extra work.” She scooped up a handful of nuts from a bowl on the bar and popped them in her mouth. “It’s taken me weeks to read through the files.”
    “Deke tells me Dalton Marlowe is putting the squeeze on everyone,” KC said.
    Dalton Marlowe was a very rich man whose son was one of three teens who went into Percy Warner Park five years ago. The students, from an exclusive high school called St. Vincent, went hiking in the southwest Nashville park that covered twenty-six hundred acres of wooded land crisscrossed by a dozen backroad trails, bike paths, and dead end roads. Their plan was to collect data for a science project and return home by dark.
    When the teens had not reported in that night, search crews had been dispatched. At the end of the second day, volunteers found one of the kids, Amber Ryder, at the bottom of a ravine. Her arm was badly broken and she suffered a head injury. When she woke up in the hospital the next day, she swore she had no memory of what had happened in the woods. Search crews continued to look for weeks but the two other students, Bethany Reed and Mike Marlowe, were never found.
    Mr. Marlowe has been pressing the Missing Persons Unit relentlessly for answers. This year, he again made a sizable donation to the police foundation, a kind of gesture that expects a return. Marlowe was clear that he didn’t want to hear any more bullshit theories about his son Mike and Bethany running off like a modern-day Romeo and