Free Itsy Bitsy Spider (Emma Frost #1) by Willow Rose Page A

slightly.
    Could it be something about my
kids? Why did she say I needed to hear this? Was it Maya? Was she in some kind
of trouble at her school? Or had something happened at Victor's school?
    My stomach turned into a knot of worry as a
mother's tend to do for no apparent reason but the fact that a whole bunch of
thoughts just entered their minds and made them scared of the most ridiculous
and absolutely unrealistic things.
    "There has been another one," Sophia
said.
    "Another one of what?" I asked feeling
stupid for not getting it right away. I didn't know any of all these people
surrounding me, only Sophia and of course Jack who stood a couple of feet away
from the crowd. For a second I worried what they thought about me. Not
something I usually did much, but for some reason I did at that moment.
    "Another murder," Sophia said.
    I felt my eyes grow wider. "What? Someone
else has been killed? How? Who?"
    "Irene Justesen," Sophia continued.
    I could tell that the rest of the crowd knew all
this already since they were nodding along as she spoke.
    "Who's that?" I asked.
    A woman I had only seen a couple of times at the
grocery store leaned forward. "The Queen of Fitness," she said.
    "That's what they used to call her,"
Sophia took over. "When she was doing all those videos and the TV
show."
    I gasped. Suddenly I knew exactly who she was.
We used to make so much fun of her when I was a teenager and accidentally
flipped on her show. How we loathed those pink legwarmers and the sweat band.
    "How did it happen?"
    "I heard it from Anne down at the
bakery," Sophia said secretly like this Anne was an undercover agent whose
identity was not to be revealed under any circumstances. "She told me the
cleaning lady, what's her name ... Clara Hermansen, found her in her own private
gym down at the estate this morning when she arrived to clean it. Apparently
her blood had soaked the entire floor in there. And get this ... the killer had
stuffed her sweat band down her throat."
    Sophia paused for effect, waited for the people
surrounding her to react. It came promptly. All the women gasped like had they
rehearsed it. I turned and looked at Jack. He didn't take part in the gasping
or talking. He seemed more like he was worried about something.
     "Don't you think?" Sophia
suddenly said and looked at me. I turned my head and stared at her. "I'm
sorry, what did you say?"
    "I was just wondering about two murders in
a very short period of time on this island, it is kind of scary, don't you
think?"
    I nodded. "Yes. It most definitely
is."
    "Do you think they might be
connected?" another woman asked me like I carried all the answers.
    I shrugged. "I don't know. But I give you
it is kind of strange. Do you know if the two killings had any
similarities?"
    "To be perfectly honest, we don't even know
that Irene was in fact killed," I heard a voice say. I turned and looked
at Jack. He was the one who had spoken. He blushed when all the ladies suddenly
looked at him.
    "I...I...I'm jjjjust sssaying, we ddon't
kknow, ddo wwe?"
    His stuttering was all of a sudden back and I
could tell it was hard on him to speak. But I was also relieved to hear that he
could speak normally without stuttering. I remembered reading about it and how
being put on the spot or in situations of pressure could make it much worse. It
made sense, I guess. I smiled at him and he smiled back. His blue eyes were
gentle and very kind. I wondered about his story, that Sophia wouldn't tell me.
I really wanted to hear it, but was afraid of pressuring him or making him feel
bad.
    "Jack’s right," I said. "We have
no idea if it was in fact murder. We can't know for sure until the police also
call it a murder."
    "What about the sweat band, then?" a
woman wearing a strange pink outfit with golden stitches asked.
    "Well, I give you that," I said.
"That isn't something she could have done on her own, but we don't know if
that is even true, or if it is just a rumor, do we? So until it has