Free Nowhere to Hide by Nancy Bush Page A

wasn’t this high.
    I should sell the place and buy a downtown, high-rise condo , he thought, the same thought that circled his brain every time he pulled into the rambler’s driveway. He’d bought it because he knew the previous owners, and they were having serious financial problems and he liked them and they needed help and . . . well . . . he just . . . bought it. He could afford to fix the place up, but he just couldn’t seem to find the energy or time or inclination. Neela teased him that all he needed was a woman to push him. Maybe it was true.
    Sheila’s image superseded the view of the vines that rose across the field and up the terraced hillside, heavy with fruit. Four months after her murder he was still having trouble processing that she was gone. It was weird. He’d known her some during elementary school—she went to Twin Oaks; he was at Sunset—then about six months earlier he’d walked into a unisex Laurelton hair salon, His and Hers, recognized Sheila, and had become one of her clients. She’d learned he was associated with Westerly Vale Vineyard and had made a “date” with him to meet there one Saturday afternoon with some of her friends. From that, he’d shared a couple of get-togethers with her and these same friends at The Barn Door, a shitkicker kind of bar off Highway 26. He’d thought she was divorced, the way she talked about Dempsey, but he’d learned later that they were separated and living apart but still married.
    Not that anything had happened between them, but it almost had. He’d been certain that Dempsey had killed her; he’d encountered the man once and learned Greg Dempsey was a crazed, jealous maniac with control issues.
    But just when Jake had decided the authorities were a bunch of idiots who couldn’t tell their ass from a hole in the ground for not arresting Dempsey, another body was discovered in a field and it was rumored that maybe a serial killer was at work. As much as Jake thought Dempsey could have killed Sheila, he wasn’t as convinced the guy was some kind of random killer.
    And then September Rafferty did a segment on the news with Channel Seven’s Pauline Kirby. Detective September Rafferty, who was involved with several high-profile homicides and happened to be the daughter of Braden Rafferty, his father’s ex-employer, and the same girl Jake had spent one reckless night with amongst the grape vines of her father’s vineyard.
    Nine Rafferty. Everyone called her Nine.
    She was investigating the death of another young woman who’d been left in a field. Something Decatur. Emily . . . no, Emmy. Emmy Decatur. He’d been fascinated at seeing Nine on the news for a couple of reasons. First, she looked great. So young and serious and her body was compact and muscular, like a gymnast’s, or Sheila’s, for that matter. Second, Nine was a Rafferty and from what he knew of the Raffertys, they sure wouldn’t normally choose law enforcement as a profession, so that was an anomaly. He wondered what had happened there.
    Nine . . . He and his friends had sure given her a lot of crap about her wealth when they were growing up. Her brother, Auggie, had been around, too; Jake had played sports with him and had known him well enough, though it was Nine with whom he shared the most classes. The Rafferty twins, and their older sister, May, had been sent to public school instead of private for reasons still unclear to Jake. He also still remembered vividly when Nine’s sister May, and her friend, Erin, were killed in a robbery attempt while working at a local burger place, Louie’s. The tragedy had swept the school and community, and Nine had looked shell-shocked for months. Maybe May’s death was a reason for Nine’s choice.
    Or, maybe Nine just felt the same anger and injustice that surged through him when he thought of a life taken by someone else’s hand.
    Who killed