Free Off Limits by Haley James

 
    Epilogue

 
    The crime was brutal, that much was
obvious. The amount of blood splattered around the room alone was enough to
make any human in their right mind nauseas. The walls were covered, the sheets
drenched, and the carpet destroyed. The bedroom nightstand table lay overturned
on its side, broken picture frames flooded the floor, all showing the sign of the struggle that had taken place.
    The woman’s body lay motionless on the
bed, her limp hands tied to the bedpost, and her legs too covered in the rich
red liquid to make out. Looking at her now, no one would know how beautiful she
had once been. No one would know her laughter had once filled the empty void in
so many people’s hearts. Her once naturally straight and perfect blonde hair
now lay stained with dry blood and bald patches where her murderer had spent
hours ripping her hair out of her sculp.
    The setting was a quite suburban
neighborhood, the house a light red, and like something out of a movie,
surrounded by a white thick fence. It was the type of small town where no one
locked the doors, the kind of town where people were raised to believe in the
good. And it was the kind of town where a crime so brutal was sure to cause a
stir hard to recover from.
    In a few hours, Ashley Miller’s sister
would walk through her front door, just like any other Friday. She would set
her sister’s cup of coffee on the counter and walk to her bedroom to wake her.
Only the second she set foot on the first step to the second floor, she would
smell it, the awful stench to a tragic crime. And as she ran up the stairs
faster than she thought she could run, she would see evidence of the fight that
had started in the hallway then continued into the bedroom. And then, unlike
any other day of her life, her sister would find Ashley’s lifeless body.
    An investigation would begin and a small
town in Texas would turn into absolute pandemonium. Then an obsessive hunt for
the woman’s killer would begin, ending in awful tragic circumstances.
    That, however, was in a few hours. For
now, Ashley’s body would stay put, with the town of Burberry sleeping soundly
in their beds thinking that everyone was as always safe and sound.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    Chapter one

 
    Melissa Miller pushed her foot
down harder on the petal of her jeep careful not to collide into the rail on
the side of the narrow road she was speeding down. The leaves had started to
fall slowly off the trees indicating that fall was approaching, and on any
other day she might stop to admire the beauty of the season change. It wasn’t
any other day though. Today was the day Melissa had been waiting for, the day
her sister’s killer would finally be brought to justice.
    Sure, she had said this before,
but today was it, she could feel it with all she had in her bones. Today she
had finally found the break in the case she was waiting for, a year later. A
year after that awful morning when she had walked into her worst nightmare,
finding her older sister strangled and beaten to death in the bedroom of her
two story red farm house.
    A full year and the son of a bitch who
had done unthinkable things to her flesh and blood was still walking around on
the streets of their town, free as the wind. Melissa still had to see him
everyday, knowing what he had done, and it took everything inside of her to not
smack the smug look off his face every time she passed him on the street.
    Today though, she would show him. Today,
he would know the pain she had felt for the past year of her life every single
day. She couldn’t wait to see the look on his face when they slapped those
handcuffs on him and toted him off to a nice gray cell for the rest of his
life. The thought alone was enough to make her heart beat faster in her chest
and she had to remind herself to breathe as she neared the police station.
    As she swung the wheel of her jeep around
the sharp turn and into the parking lot her