Free Kill and Run (A Thorny Rose Mystery Book 1) by Lauren Carr

fast.
    Grabbing his bottled water, he turned around to almost body slam the woman staring at the menu from behind him. “Excuse me,” Murphy blurted out before recognizing her as the young maroon-haired woman texting next to the green Volkwagen with the ANTIWAR license plate. The same one who had cut off the Corvette while changing lanes to fall in behind him. Now, here she was in the same restaurant as he was.
    Her fair face turned pale. Her mouth dropped open. “Ex-excuse me!” she said with a gasp.
    “I can help the next customer in line,” the cashier behind the counter announced.
    Instead of stepping forward to place her order, she continued to stare at Murphy with wide green eyes. An impatient young man in khaki slacks brushed past her to step up to the counter to place his order.
    “Can I help you?” Murphy finally asked her.
    Spinning on her heels, she turned and fled from the restaurant. Unsure if he should follow her or not, Murphy watched her disappear among the throng of mall customers.
    Maybe she was hoping that I was single and just followed me to get up the nerve to hit on me, Murphy thought with a coy grin until he became aware of a hand lightly touching his arm. A young woman in a business suit and pumps smiled broadly at him. “You are certainly welcome to help me … anytime … day or night.”

Chapter Six
    “How are you doing?” Joshua took his hand off the steering wheel and reached across to rub Cameron’s leg.
    Ever since they had left Ashtabula, she had been staring straight ahead. Her brown eyes, specked with green, were directed unblinking and unseeing through the windshield. She was in deep thought—lost in the past—once again grieving the loss of her first husband.
    This is what it feels like to reopen an old wound—make it bleed all over again.
    After a silence—long enough to make Joshua think she hadn’t heard him, she responded in a soft voice. “I can’t believe I forgot all about Jane Doe. That death really got to Nick. I remember it … vaguely … but I can’t remember anything specific about the case. . . only him telling me that she kept saying, ‘She’s safe.’ He held her while she died—grateful that she, whoever she was, was safe. That’d get to anyone.”
    Joshua said, “When we get back home, call your chief and ask for a copy of the report on the case. I’m sure once you see it, everything Nick told you will come back. We don’t know for certain that her death is connected to Nick’s murder.”
    “Maybe she was a mob boss’s mistress who knew too much.” Her forehead creased with frustration, Cameron turned to him. “It’s not like me to forget things. Why didn’t I jump on that when Nick was murdered? I let him down. All these years—”
    “ Everyone assumed it was a hit and run accident by a drunk driver,” Joshua said.
    “Nick was upset about her,” she said. “How she died. That no one claimed her body. She had bruises around her wrists, proving that she had been tied up and, obviously, she was so desperate that she jumped out of a moving vehicle on the turnpike. She had to know that was going to kill her. Nick didn’t want her buried alone without her family knowing what had happened to her. It was important to him. How could I have not followed up on that? How could I have forgotten?”
    Attempting to comfort her as best he could while keeping the SUV on the road, Joshua squeezed her hand. “When Valerie died, our pastor’s wife told me that it would take a full year, if not two, to start healing from the loss,” he said. “Both she and her husband advised me not to make the decision to leave the navy and uproot my kids from their home in Oakland, California, to come back to Chester. She told me to wait a full six months before making any major decisions. I didn’t listen. I knew I was hurting, but I thought I was strong enough and smart enough and had it together enough to know what I was doing.”
    “Are you saying you