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

made a mistake?”
    “Looking back …” Keeping his eyes on the road, Joshua shrugged his shoulders. “One of the things I needed to do in preparation for moving was to get a law office to set up my private practice. This was before I decided to run for prosecuting attorney. Well, my grandfather had owned an office building in East Liverpool, Ohio. He had left the property to my grandmother, and I assumed it was left to me when she passed about five years before Valerie died. My great-uncle, Tad’s father, had been the executor of my grandmother’s estate and, in the midst of my hurting over losing Valerie, I called my cousin Tad, since his father had passed away since settling the estate. I wanted to know about renovating space in that building for my office.”
    Confused, Cameron studied his profile. “What does this—”
    “The building was gone.” Joshua plunged on. “Tad claimed that I had instructed his father to sell it and set up a college fund for my kids with the money from the sale. I swore I hadn’t. Not being the executor, Tad could only go by what his dad had told him. He insisted that his dad didn’t lie. I said his father had robbed me. Of course, Tad didn’t take that lying down. We got into a big fight and didn’t speak to each other for two months.” He held up two fingers to show her.
    Knowing the close relationship between the two cousins—Dr. Tad MacMillan even lived next door to them, Cameron was surprised to learn that they had once fought so severely that they didn’t speak for months.
    Joshua went on, “Eventually, Tad called to apologize and offered an olive branch. I accepted it because I did miss him. We never spoke of it again—until a couple of years ago, when Tad was buying the house next door.” He glanced over at her. “Now here’s the kicker. To this day, I have no memory of any of that. Not the argument, asking about that building, accusing Tad’s dad of being a thief—none of it. I remember plain and clear authorizing him to sell the building, but I still have no memory of fighting with Tad and not talking to him.”
    “Because …”
    “Now,” Joshua said, “when I think back to that period, the first fifteen months after Valerie died, leaving the navy, the move, the renovation of our house where my grandmother had raised me—all of that—I remember it like being in a fog. I even solved two major murder cases and was elected county prosecutor and I barely remember any of it.”
    “Your memory was clouded with grief,” she said. “It’s the way I remember my journey into alcoholism. I thought it was all the booze that my brain had soaked up.”
    “Maybe that played a part in it for you,” Joshua said. “I wasn’t thinking right because I was in so much pain.”
    Her eyes narrowed, she cocked her head at him. “What would you have done differently if you had to do it all over again?”
    Joshua shrugged. “Things turned out good. My kids turned out better than okay.”
    “You were lucky,” she said. “I didn’t turn out so well.”
    He shot her a grin. “You turned out fine.”
    “I practically ruined my police career,” she said. “If I hadn’t bottomed out when I did and gotten help, I could have died.”
    “But you came back like a champ,” Joshua said. “You got help, sobered up, and now you’re one of Pennsylvania’s finest.”
    She squeezed his hand. “And I was able to love again … both of us were.”
    “That, too.”
    Worry crossed her face. “I wonder if I can make it through all this again.”
    “Sure you will,” Joshua said. “Because this time, you aren’t going through it alone.” He shot her a smile.
    Reassured, she brushed his hand across her lips, kissing his fingers softly.

As Lieutenant Wu had predicted, Hillary Koch blew her top when she learned from NCIS’s medical examiner that the bodies of five women were being transported to the navy’s morgue on orders of Lieutenant Murphy Thornton.
    During Murphy’s