Free Hiding From Death (A Darcy Sweet Cozy Mystery #6) by K.J. Emrick

mother would want that.
                  Looking down at her daughter with a sad smile, Izzy ruffled Lilly’s short hair.  “I had to make Lilly dress like a boy and call herself Alex.  I figured we’d be harder to find if we were travelling as a mother and her son.”
                  Lilly stuck her lower lip out.  “I didn’t like it.  Boys have stupid clothes.”
                  “Yes,” Darcy said with a laugh.  “They really do.”
                  “My brave little girl,” Izzy said.  “Her daddy and I were having a fight.  Mommy saw him with another woman and it started a fight.”
                  Darcy nodded, understanding that Izzy didn’t want to say too much in front of Lilly.  The girl was too young to hear that her father had been cheating on her mother, or that Izzy had caught him doing it.
                  “So her daddy and I went away for a weekend,” Izzy continued.  “We were supposed to fix what was wrong, have time to talk and just figure things out.  There’s a nice motel just outside of Cider Hill, where we lived.  Private cabins set back in the woods.  It was very nice.  The first night we stayed there, well, Chip and I argued a little but we talked it out and things seemed to be going good.  We went to bed, and I felt better.”
                  A single tear fell down Izzy’s cheek and she wiped it away quickly before Lilly could see.  “The next morning I woke up, and Chip was gone.  I don’t remember what happened.  I slept like a rock, and when I woke up he was gone and there was all this…all this…”
                  Blood, Darcy knew she meant.  There was all this blood.  It had been enough for the police to assume Chip was dead, and that Izzy had killed him.  Poor woman, Darcy thought.
                  Unless, of course, she really did kill her husband.
                  “So I ran,” Izzy said with a shrug.  “I went back for Lilly and grabbed a few of our things and we haven’t stopped running since last year.  I thought I could buy this house and hide out here.”
                  “You paid in cash?” Darcy asked.  “That must have been a lot of money.”
                  “It was the only way I wouldn’t have to prove who I was,” Izzy explained.  “Things had been bad between me and Chip for a long time.  I had put a lot of money aside, just in case, and I managed to cash in my savings bonds before everyone in Cider Hill knew I was a fugitive.  We’ve had enough to live on, but my money’s just about run out.  The trip to the grocery store we just took almost broke me.”
                  “I can’t imagine what you’ve been through,” Darcy said to Izzy.  She had begun twisting the ring on her finger, wondering how deep this mystery ran.  “I want to help you, if I can.”
                  “How can you help?”  Izzy was obviously frustrated.  “I tried to hide us, keep us safe.  I changed our looks and moved us here to the middle of nowhere and it didn’t do any good.  He still found us.”
                  The man who had attacked them here in the house, Darcy realized.  “Who was he, Izzy?  Who was that man?”
                  Izzy froze, her hands tightening around her mug of tea.  “I don’t know.”
                  Darcy waited for her to say more, but Izzy sat quietly and very still.  There was a lot more being left unsaid but Darcy decided it wouldn’t do her any good to press the matter.  No doubt that the man she had seen here in the house with the gun was the same dark man from her vision.  There had to be a connection to what had happened to Izzy and who this man was.  Maybe if she showed Izzy she really could help then she’d feel safe enough to—
                  A loud knocking on the