Free River Road by Jayne Ann Krentz

smiled. “No shit?”
    She smiled, too. “No shit.”
    “Got a plan?”
    “Absolutely. I finally decided to go the scientific route to finding the right partner. I registered at a very reputable, very expensive online matchmaking site. I’ve had thirty dates in the past few months. All of them were excellent matches, at least according to the computer algorithms that matched us.”
    “But?”
    She exhaled slowly. “But I’ve still got those darn commitment issues. What about you? Made any progress on the relationship front since your divorce?”
    “Well, I probably still have communication problems.” He dropped another tile onto the stack. “But tonight I had dinner with a very interesting woman who has commitment issues, so things are definitely looking up.”
    She laughed. “You’re right. You really are a glass-half-full kind of guy.”
    “You miss your ex-fiancé?”
    She stopped laughing and went with the truth. “Nope. The dirty little secret is that I was relieved when it was all over. Miss your ex-wife?”
    “Nope. I was relieved, too, when I came home one day and discovered that she had walked out. It meant I could stop trying to fix myself. Lucky for me, she left before Fletcher Consulting started to make some money.”
    He removed the last of the tiles and studied the wooden frame and backing for a moment. Then he reached for another tool.
    A few minutes later, he eased the fame and backing out of the fireplace, revealing the dark opening.
    “Looks like there is something inside,” he said.
    Lucy uncoiled and sat forward on the sofa, trying to peer into the darkness. She could make out a large lumpy shape.
    “Why on earth would Aunt Sara—” She stopped.
    “Got a flashlight?” Mason asked. “If you don’t, I can get one from my truck.”
    “Sara kept one in the kitchen. I’ll get it.”
    “I think I’m going to need a clean towel, too.”
    Lucy jumped up and went into the kitchen. When she returned, Mason took the towel and used it to remove a poker that had been lodged inside the fireplace.
    “What is it?” she asked.
    “I can’t be positive yet, but I’ve got a feeling that this is not going to be good.”
    He set the poker aside and took the flashlight from her. He aimed the beam through the opening. She moved closer and looked into the deep fireplace.
    “Looks like a copy of an old newspaper,” she said. “It’s sealed in a plastic bag.”
    “Look closer.”
    A cold chill iced her blood. “Is that a black garbage bag? Don’t tell me Sara stuffed the fireplace with trash before she covered it with tiles. That would be just too weird.”
    “Garbage bags don’t have zippers,” Mason said. “It’s a body bag.”
    “Good grief.” Lucy stepped back reflexively. “I can’t believe it.”
    Mason used the towel again to reach into the fireplace. He removed the bag containing the newspaper. Lucy glanced at the banner.
    “It’s a San Francisco paper,” she said. She glanced at the date and did the math. “Oh, crap. It was published in August, thirteen years ago. That’s the summer when Brinker was in town. Someone circled the headline,
Scorecard Rapist Strikes Again
.”
    Mason turned the plastic bag over to view the other side of the newspaper. “There’s a driver’s license in here.”
    Lucy stared at the photo of the young, astonishingly good-looking man. He was blond and blue-eyed, with a charismatic smile that promised dark thrills.
    “Tristan Brinker,” she said.

10

    S he killed him because of what he had planned to do to me, didn’t she?” Lucy said.
    “There are still a lot of questions to be answered here, but yes, I think that scenario is the most likely one,” Mason said.
    He watched Lucy out of the corner of his eye as he removed two bottles of water from the refrigerator. She probably needed something stronger than water, but she had declined another glass of wine. He could not tell how she was handling the shock of the discovery. She appeared