Free A Widow's Guilty Secret by Marie Ferrarella Page B

“Actually, it’s the only kind of thinking I’m capable of—I don’t know that much about computers, I just know that the ones that aren’t the portable kind that run on batteries need a power source. I got caught in a blackout once and the term paper I was working on disappeared because the computer shut down the moment the power stopped flowing through it.” A slight smile curved her lips. “Knew that hard-learned lesson would come in handy someday.”
    Had she shut off the computer’s power source fast enough? Nick wondered as he regarded the dark computer screen.
    “I certainly hope so,” he muttered out loud.
    “So now what?” she asked, nodding at the tower. “Are you going to bring it to some tech expert in the police department?”
    “We don’t have one of those in Vengeance.” At least, none that he was aware of. “But the FBI does.” The FBI had everything available to them. It was a matter of knowing who to ask. He’d never been very good at taking hat in hand and pleading his case, though.
    “The FBI?” she asked incredulously. Did they even have a satellite office out here? “You can do that? Just walk in and bring a computer to them?”
    “Probably not under normal circumstances,” he conceded, but God knew this case didn’t fit under that heading. “But right now, there’s a local police/FBI joint task force working on the murders.”
    “Murders,” she echoed. For a moment, she’d forgotten that Peter’s death was not an isolated incident. She really didn’t know if that made it better or worse. “If other people were killed, maybe Peter’s death was just collateral damage. You know, wrong place, wrong time, that sort of thing. Maybe the killer didn’t want to leave a witness behind.”
    “You’re forgetting about the card that was found in your husband’s pocket.” He looked at her, wishing that for her sake, he could say that her theory was right. But it wasn’t. Burris had been singled out, just the way the other two men had been. “This was personal.”
    A thought occurred to her. A horrible, crushing thought. “Could Peter have gotten the other two people killed?” she asked. “Could they have been unwilling witnesses to his death, and then the killer eliminated them, too, to keep them from talking?”
    There was only one thing wrong with her theory. “The other men had cards on them, too.”
    Suzy steepled her hands before her lips, covering them, holding back the sound of anguished distress that had risen to them and was still hovering there.
    “Then it is a serial killer,” she cried. How many more people were going to have to die before this monster was caught?
    “We’re not ready to say that yet,” Nick cautioned, fervently hoping that wasn’t the case. “The last thing we need is having the public panic on us. We want to keep them in the dark as long as possible—in case we’re wrong and this is just part of some elaborate vendetta.”
    She ran her hands up and down her arms, feeling a definite chill though the temperature inside the house hadn’t changed. She could feel her nerves go on high alert.
    “Are my son and I in any danger?” she asked.
    Nick gave it to her straight and was as honest with her as he could. “I don’t think so. The killer seemed exclusively focused on the three people he killed.”
    But maybe the killing would be extended to the victims’ families.
    Get a grip, Suzy. You can’t let yourself think that way.
    She was struck by something Nick had just said. “Then you know it was a man who killed Peter and the others?”
    “Actually, no, I don’t,” he admitted. “It’s just an assumption. Most multiple killers tend to be men,” he told her. “And given the people who were murdered, it would have had to have been a fairly strong woman to get them all out there and bury them. Process of elimination says it’s most likely a man,” he concluded.
    Suzy kept going back to the other two men in her mind. She needed