Free The Day It Happened (A Miranda's Rights Mystery Book 0) by Linsey Lanier Page A

“Where’s Amy?”
    Slowly he exhaled his irritation and turned back to her. Once she’d thought his eyes sexy, but now those cold, black slits reminded her of a lurking animal ready to pounce. That look always made her feel so powerless. Like she was nothing.
    Terror welled up in her throat. “Where’s Amy?” she asked again, trying not to sound hysterical. Leon hated it when she got emotional.
    His reply was as icy as the snow outside. “I got rid of her.”
    Miranda hugged herself tight, feeling like she’d been struck in the chest with the butt of a rifle. “What?” she gasped.
    “You heard me.” He rose, went to the sink to wash his hands.
    Trembling, she picked up his plate and followed him. She had to control herself. She couldn’t let him see her panic. “Leon. What did you do with her?”
    Meticulously, he wiped his hands on a dishtowel and watched her as she set the plate down in the sink. Her hand shook.
    “I’ve put up with this nonsense for weeks,” he said in a flat tone. “I had to make a decision. I couldn’t have that vile thing in this house any longer.”
    “Vile thing?” Her voice cracked with emotion. It wasn’t the first time he’d called Amy that. “She’s just a baby.”
    He glared at her, those hateful black eyes taunting her. “She was your baby. We both know you’ve been ruined, Miranda. Ruined.”
    Smarting with pain and humiliation, Miranda let out a sob as she pressed her hands to her head.
    That again. She might have known. Amy didn’t belong to Leon, no matter how hard Miranda pretended she did.
    When she’d learned she was pregnant, she’d made herself believe Leon would get used to the idea. She told herself the baby would bring them together again. They could get back to the way it had been when they were first married. They could be a family again.
    Lies.
    The truth was that the night her child was conceived had been the worst night of her life. That awful wintry night. Those gruesome hands tearing at her clothes. That horrid, hooded face. The cold ice scraping against her back. The things that stranger had done to her…. The examiner at the hospital had said she was lucky her injuries weren’t worse.
    Miranda hadn’t felt lucky. She’d wished she were dead.
    Leon had called it her “accident.” She’d been careless. Subconsciously, he said, she must have wanted it to happen, or it wouldn’t have. He wouldn’t let her go to the police. His buddies at the station would find out and realize what kind of woman he was married to. After that night, Leon had looked at her as though she were infected with some horrid disease he might catch if he got too close, though she’d tested clean for STDs.
    Then he’d told her to get rid of the child. She’d refused.
    Now, standing at the sink in their tiny kitchen, Miranda realized Leon had only been waiting until mid-November, until after Amy was born, to take the child from her. He probably thought she should be grateful he’d given her three weeks.
    He brushed past her. “I have to go to work.”
    “Leon.” Her throat strangled with anguish. “What have you done with her?”
    He shook his head in that condescending way. “You’ve heard of adoption, haven’t you?”
    She stared at him. “You gave Amy up for adoption?”
    “Now your little brain is starting to work.” He reached for his thick policeman’s jacket.
    She covered her mouth with both hands. He had to be lying. How could he have given Amy up for adoption without her consent? Who would have taken her?
    Reading her thoughts, he exhaled in frustration. “I had an opportunity. There wasn’t time to convince you of the sense of it, so I duplicated your signature on the papers.”
    She blinked at him. Forged, he meant. He must have bribed someone to look the other way. “How?” she dared to ask, forcing her tone not to sound too demanding.
    “It wasn’t difficult. I know people. Judges. Court Clerks. Members of agencies. I took her to one of