Free Nemesis (Southern Comfort) by Lisa Clark O'Neill

that.  They suspected she was lying. 
    But as soon as the Marshalls found Skeet, she’d be of no use to them anymore.
    Cheek growing hot from where the carpet abraded it, Josie ignored this latest assault to her flesh.  There’d been enough other wounds inflicted by the tip of Wilson’s knife that some rug-burn was hardly worth mentioning.  Glancing down, she noted the stains darkening her soiled sweater.
    And remembering exactly how those drying stains had come about, rubbed against the carpet even harder.
    A noise outside froze her in place.  She lifted her aching head to listen.  It sounded like… a car door?  Was it possible they’d parked the van in some kind of lot?
    Hope fizzed like shaken soda through her veins, bubbling to the surface of her despair, and she rubbed against the carpet even harder.  Just a little more.  Just a little…
    One of the back doors swung open to reveal Brady’s smiling face.
    “Good morning, Josie! You’ll never guess who Wilson and I ran into last night.”
    The duct tape finally loosened, just in time for Josie to scream.
     
     
     
    CHAPTER EIGHT
    DESPONDENT, Sadie sat in her car in the empty driveway, staring at her grandmother’s house.  It wasn’t quite the crack den Kathleen had caused her to visualize last night, but time, not to mention numerous renters, hadn’t exactly been kind.  The wooden structure – a traditional example of Low Country architecture, with its wide porches, tabby foundation and cat slide dormers darkened by plantation shutters tightly closed – looked sad and forlorn amidst the tangle of azaleas that had grown wild in the passing years. The white boards might lack graffiti, but they could certainly use a decent coat of paint.  And the enormous live oaks crouched over the house made it look like something from a dark fairy tale, the Spanish moss dripping onto the rusting tin roof the tattered robes from which their bony fingers pointed.
    Perhaps more depressing than anything else, a wooden privacy fence now ran the length of the lot, separating the property from the neighboring Murphy’s, where once they’d freely mingled together.
    Everything had changed, she thought, looking at the house, which seemed somehow smaller than she’d remembered.  Even her.
    She sat in the car, paralyzed, while her internal emotional clock worked furiously toward recalibration.  It was no longer the home of her childhood memories, but change or no change, she was here and she intended to stay.
    Sadie approached the porch steps and rapped forcefully on the front door.  The brass knocker was black and pitted from prolonged exposure to the salty air.  Silence greeted her from within, as she’d sort of suspected it would.  When she’d picked up the keys from the rental agent, the woman explained there’d been no contact with the sub-lessee in the past week, and she thought he’d probably cleared out.  Personally, Sadie thought that the woman could have put forth a little more effort into checking into the situation – not to mention taking better care of the house – but that was neither here nor there. 
    She also felt guilty that she herself hadn’t taken more of an interest in the handling of the property.  The sight of that fence, which Patrick Murphy had obviously erected to shield his own immaculately-kept home from the neighboring view, brought a warm flush to her face.
    She knocked again, one more effort at perfunctory courtesy, before inserting her key in the lock.  The door swung inward with a creak of hinges.
    No scent of baking cookies drifted out to greet her, no hint of lavender sachets or Murphy’s Oil Soap.  Not even the mothballs she’d detested as a kid.  The smell was one of mildew and emptiness, of a house which had been lived in but not made a home.  Sadie stepped into it with a mixture of warmth and regret. 
    Most of the furniture still sat where memory dictated, although it lay covered in an inch of dust.  A clunky