Free B00NRQWAJI by Nichole Christoff Page A

minutes?”

    I didn’t speak.
    We both knew the answer to that one.
    “Eric didn’t find her until dawn,” Barrett said. “Some sick son of a bitch had stripped her, left her out there in the cold….”
    “And the sheriff ran you in for questioning.”
    Barrett nodded.
    He didn’t have to tell me the next part. I’d read about it in the newspaper. They’d found his DNA on her mouth, cultured from a bit of saliva left behind from that ill-advised kiss. It had been at the dawn of DNA testing and every police department had been keen to use the new technique—not that they’d always known what to do with the results. Some members of the community had interpreted them as proof of Barrett’s guilt, however. And some—namely Eric—apparently still did today.
    But I didn’t believe Barrett had attacked Pamela.
    Unless I missed my guess, Sheriff Bowker hadn’t believed Barrett was guilty, either. After all, he’d run in nearly every male student at Fallowfield High School. And he’d never brought charges against any of them.
    “You weren’t arrested,” I reminded Barrett.
    “Maybe I should’ve been. She killed herself because of what happened when I let her walk home alone. It destroyed her. It destroyed Eric, too. Vance says he’s hit bottom since he got home from Afghanistan.”
    “Eric’s not your responsibility.”

    Barrett didn’t reply to me.
    Because he didn’t agree with me.
    And that’s when I knew. To fulfill my obligation to Barrett’s grandmother, to settle the score Eric kept against Barrett, and to bring Barrett some measure of peace, I needed to do one thing. I needed to find out who had raped Pamela Wentz over twenty years ago.
    So that was what I intended to do.

Chapter 8
    The next day dawned much too early, but I was ready for it. I’d spent a restless night in a chair at the window of Elise’s girlhood bedroom, keeping watch over the door to Barrett’s little apartment. Maybe I would’ve slept in the bed had I been able to extract a promise from Barrett that he’d leave well enough alone. But any connection we’d forged while he’d told me about his final encounter with Eric’s sister evaporated when I tried to tell him what to do. In return, he’d insisted I leave Fallowfield, and that didn’t help. By the time I marched toward his grandmother’s house, we were both fed up with each other—and I was more determined than ever to learn exactly what had happened to Pamela Wentz.
    After a quick morning shower and a quiet ransacking of my suitcase, I tiptoed down the stairs in my stocking feet, carrying my oxfords so as not to wake Barrett’s grandmother. The fourth step from the bottom creaked under the ball of my foot despite my best efforts. And popped like a shot fired from a kid’s cap gun.
    “There’s coffee,” Mrs. Barrett called from the back of the house, “or I can make tea.”
    I found her in her kitchen, bustling between the range and refrigerator as if she were a Norman Rockwell illustration come to life. The room was cozy with the scents of bacon and real butter, and before I could stop myself, I pictured Barrett bounding into the room as a teenager, eager for his breakfast. Every American youngster should begin his day in such a way, though few did, and if Barrett had, I was glad for it.

    At Mrs. Barrett’s bidding, I slid into a Windsor chair at her round oak table and pulled a cloth napkin into my lap. The blue and white willowware dotting the tablecloth was completely charming. I poured a cup of coffee as she directed and took a sip of the juice in my glass. It was apple. And I supposed, given that the Barrett clan had made their living from the fruit for generations now, I shouldn’t have expected any other kind.
    She plunked a platter of scrambled eggs in front of me. Beside it, she deposited a server bearing a stack of pancakes. There was no way the two of us would be able to eat all this, but any hope I had of Barrett joining us faded when his