Free KENNICK: A Bad Boy Romance Novel by Meg Jackson

shit
together before she left a puddle on the bench.

 
    “Something like that,” he said finally. “But what
really did it was the fact that the DA couldn’t go to trial. There was a page
missing from the case file.”

 
    She cocked her head. Finally, something interesting
enough to get her mind off Kennick’s omnipresent sex appeal.

 
    “Back then, you know, they didn’t have computers to
back shit up. So when the page went missing, it was gone for good. And any
lawyer worth his salt – even a shitty public defender – would have cried
mistrial, and won.”

 
    “I didn’t know that,” Kim said. “But, I mean…why did
they even keep pursuing the case, then, if it would have been a mistrial no
matter what? I mean, couldn’t anyone else they have brought in said the same thing?”

 
    Kennick shook his head.

 
    “The page went missing, but it was easy enough to
figure out what was on that page. It
was the page that detailed the footprints left at the scene. Wouldn’t normally
make or break a case. Wouldn’t have to, anyway. If you had enough other physical evidence, or motive, or
whatever, I guess, you could still build a case.”

 
    “But…they did have
all that on your Dad, didn’t they?” Kim asked. Even as she did, she felt warm
with regret; the way she’d asked it certainly made it sound like she wasn’t
buying what Kennick was selling. But she knew enough to know that the evidence
against Pieter had been compelling. Compelling enough to convince people,
obviously. His semen was inside her, his baby was inside her, he went AWOL when
they found the body, didn’t report it even though it was clear he’d been the
last to see her. Motive. Hard evidence. Sketchy behavior.

 
    And above it all the looming specter of who he was. A traveler. A vagabond. A
troublemaker, con man, born of bad blood and worse morals. A gypsy.

 
    “Sure did,” Kennick said stonily. “Heaps of it. Enough
to make it clear he couldn’t stay in town without getting lynched.”

 
    Kim winced. Here she sat, trying to remain impartial,
though her body and heart yearned to believe whatever Kennick said. Didn’t make
it easy, though, when her whole life she’d heard how clear it was his father had done it.

 
    “That page,” Kennick continued. “Like I said, it
contained the evidence of the footprints found at the scene. There must have
been good ones; they found Dad’s tire tracks easy enough. It had been a wet
summer.”

 
    Kim nodded, now peeling the label of her own beer with
increasingly anxious fingers.

 
    “What that page would have showed would have cleared
Dad. I know it would have,” Kennick said, leaning forward now, eyes glinting,
boring into Kim’s own. Oh shit, Kim
thought, wilting under his stare, imagining those eyes coming to her on some
cold, dark night, seeking her out in a dim bedroom, the hands that they were
attached to closing around her ankles and yanking her body towards him, towards
his…

 
    “Why’s that,” Kim asked, willing the stutter out of
her voice.

 
    “Because Dad had a limp,” Kennick said, eyes
narrowing. “There would have been a third set of tracks. A set that didn’t limp. And that would have been
enough.”

Chapter Ten

 
    Kim exhaled. That was it? That was his whole case? It
was all built on the fact that a missing page from a thirty-year-old file could potentially have cast “reasonable doubt”
on the case? Maybe he wasn’t as smart as those intense eyes seemed to show.

 
    “Um,” Kim said, wondering if she should voice this
argument or keep it to herself and be on her way. She’d already thought of a
way she could, possibly, help, if he’d been able to convince her. Now, she knew
that option was null and void. There was no way she’d…

 
    “There’s more,” Kennick said, and Kim’s mouth
twitched. If his next argument was as weak as his first, she’d only have
herself to blame for getting her hopes up.