Free See No Evil by Allison Brennan

police will be all over her for it. She didn’t mean that.”
    “We don’t know what she meant until she tells us,” Dillon reminded her.
    “This is an obvious case of sexual abuse,” Julia said, her voice cracking. “Stanton won’t prosecute, even if she was somehow involved.” She cleared her throat. “I need to be with her.”
    “Julia, we still don’t know exactly what happened,” Dillon cautioned her.
    “Are you saying she’s lying?” Julia exclaimed.
    “No.”
    Connor interjected, “What Dillon means is that Emily was impaired yesterday. She might not have all her facts straight. We need to verify everything she says, find out exactly what she meant about ‘planning’ Victor’s death.”
    “Whose side are you on?” Julia asked them. “I thought you were here to help her, not interrogate her—” Julia stopped herself, rubbed her face, and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”
    “You haven’t slept, you’re stressed, it’s understandable that you’re edgy. Go in, talk to her. What Emily really needs right now is family support.” Dillon paused. “Where’s her mother?”
    Julia glanced at Emily through the observation room’s window. She’d stopped crying, but her body was still curled into a ball. She looked so small. “Crystal…she has issues.”
    “Everyone has issues, Julia.”
    “Crystal is defined by her status. With men, with money, with society. Having a child didn’t fit into that.”
    Reluctantly, Julia continued. She didn’t like thinking about Crystal and her brother, Matt, and her problems with her brother before he died.
    “Crystal and Matt were in college and she got pregnant. I’m convinced she deliberately got pregnant because of who Matt was. His connections, his money, his name. They married and everything seemed okay for a while.”
    “A while?”
    “Matt adored Emily. Adored her more than Crystal, or so Crystal thought. She played all these mind games with him—pretending to be ill, pretending to have secret admirers—every game in the book. Eventually, Matt tired of it. I don’t know the details. He knew I didn’t like Crystal so we rarely talked about his marriage. It had been a sore point in our relationship, something I regret because we lost so much that we had before Crystal came into the picture. But I knew something was going on. Matt asked me to review all the legal documents that Emily was associated with, and he made me executrix of her trust. Then…he died.”
    “A car accident, right?” Dillon asked.
    It had been the worst night of Julia’s life, and she couldn’t go into the details for fear of cracking. The guilt scratched at her, trying to control her again. She pushed it back. “Six years ago. It was awful. Losing him, then battling Crystal just to see my niece. Very unpleasant.” Unpleasant? Julia sounded like her mother. That entire year had been Hell.
    “And what’s Emily’s relationship with her mother?”
    “Crystal doesn’t have real relationships. Unless you can do something for her. It’s all about connections. Crystal’s only connection to Emily is through my brother, a dead man she certainly never loved.”
    Dillon sighed, made some notes. “I don’t think it’s in Emily’s best interest to go home,” he said, “but circumstances may change in the next few days. Right now, the best thing for Emily is to keep her here. But I don’t think she’s suicidal. I’m going to put her under a nondisclosed medical observation for seventy-two hours. That should give you,” he said to Connor, “some time to follow up on her comments.”
    “First place I’d go is to her shrink,” Connor said.
    “I’ll talk to him,” said Dillon. “He won’t give you anything.”
    “And you’ll share?” asked his brother.
    “Of course.”
    Connor nodded. “The police have the house and Emily’s possessions as evidence, but I’ll follow up with her friends, her school, her affiliations, anyplace and anything to find out