Free SHATTERED by Alice Sharpe Page B

different man.”
    “You, too? Like Dad?”
    “Not exactly, but changed. I lost a little of my swagger, wasn’t so sure I was leading the life I wanted or that I had all the answers. I failed to save two kids, Sarah. I was there after a vacation, unarmed and vulnerable, and I let two kids die. If I’d been carrying, the whole thing would have ended a lot differently.”
    “But that wasn’t your fault....”
    “Maybe not technically, but saving innocent people is what I’m supposed to be able to do, and I failed. I guess I was so disappointed in myself that it affected other parts of my life and I kind of closed down.”
    “But it’s only been a few months, Nate. You have to give yourself a chance. Anyone who goes through a mess like that is going to suffer some changes, don’t you think? Your girl should have stood by you and helped you.”
    He shrugged. “She’s a little on the impatient side. She wanted me to be who I was before, and I couldn’t do it. Enough about me. What happened to the cop you married?”
    “We got hitched when I was seventeen. That’s right after Mom’s gambling worsened. Dad told her to leave. I had just graduated from high school and I didn’t know what to do.”
    “So you got married?”
    “It was more complicated than that,” she said softly.
    “In what way?”
    “We saw each other through some hard times,” she said.
    “You didn’t take his name?”
    “No. I had all these dreams of being a veterinarian and I wanted my own name—at least that’s what I told myself—but I think I really kept it in an attempt to make my dad proud of me. I always disappointed him.”
    “That seems so unlikely,” Nate said.
    She smiled. “Well, that’s how it seemed to me at the ripe old age of seventeen. You didn’t really know Dad well, did you?”
    “No, not at all.”
    “He could be hard. I mean, as strange as he got, the truth is he was always a little on the odd side and his temper— Well, he had a temper.”
    “Was your husband like your dad?”
    “No, no way. Johnny was kind. He had a good heart.”
    “What happened between you guys?”
    “He left me,” Sarah said. “Not by choice, though. He was shot in the line of duty and died before I could get to him.”
    “I’m so sorry,” Nate said softly. He stared at her for several seconds. The light bathed her face with a glow that made her seem otherworldly, too beautiful to be human, too human to be anything else. There was sadness in her tilted blue eyes that he yearned to kiss away. She was so alive her body seemed to hum.
    And she was in deep trouble....
    “Where did your father used to keep the coins?” he asked.
    “The only time I ever saw them, they were in a secret cabinet built into the wall beside the fireplace.”
    “I assume that’s the first place you looked?”
    “Absolutely. There’s nothing in there now but a photo of Skipjack.”
    “From the looks of things, you’ve searched just about everywhere else.”
    “I tried, but you arrived before I could tackle the floors and walls.”
    “That’s why you were looking in the safe?”
    She paused a second.
    “I know you took something out of the safe,” he told her. “I saw you put it in your pocket.”
    “Oh, that,” she said. “It’s nothing. Nothing to do with the coins or my mother, anyway. It’s just a key and it’s personal.”
    He nodded. “Okay. Nothing else in the safe, though, right?”
    “No. I was hoping the coins themselves would be in there or maybe a clue as to where he might have moved them. Even proof he sold them would be better than nothing. And I wanted to find his will, too, but it wasn’t in there, either.”
    “I guess we better continue the search, then.”
    “We?” she asked.
    “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “In fact, if you want to lie down and close your eyes for a few minutes, I’ll take all the pictures off the walls and look for any sign things were disturbed, like new plaster or patches.