Free KENNICK: A Bad Boy Romance Novel by Meg Jackson Page A

“There’s this.”

 
    Rising from his seat, he went to a far corner of the
trailer, where a small cupboard held various knickknacks and papers files.
Rummaging slightly, he found a thick manilla envelope and brought it back to
the table. His wolf-like grace as he moved wasn’t lost on Kim. Nothing he did
was lost on Kim.

 
    “I keep this in Beebi's trailer because she's less
likely to spill beer all over it than my brothers,” he said with a fond smile.
“And my sister? She'd lose it the second I handed it to her.”

 
    Dumping the contents onto the table, he began to
separate the various papers. Kim saw glimpses of newspaper clippings, weathered
photographs, handwritten notes, yellowed pages of neat type. One by one, he
began to slide pieces of paper across the table for her to examine.

 
    The first one appeared to be a receipt. For a ring.
Dated in 1981. She looked up at Kennick.

 
    “He bought that ring two days before Rhonda was
murdered,” he said. “He kept that ring his whole life. He was going to
propose.”

 
    He slipped a second piece of paper across the table.

 
    “Application for a marriage license,” he said. “Dad
started filling it out the same day he bought a ring. Got so damn excited he
wanted to get started before he even asked. Only stopped because it got to
parts he needed her to fill out.”

 
    The sheet was clearly an old form; I wondered if there
was any way to cross-reference it with other marriage licenses from the time,
or if Town Hall even kept records of their old, outdated forms.

 
    “Two tickets to a show in Dover for the week after she
died. Lou Reed. Rhonda’s favorite,” Kennick said.

 
    Kim thought that was a pretty weak piece of evidence,
but she nodded. The next paper slipped across the counter was a letter written
in elegant, feminine script. Kim picked it up and squinted; the print was small
and cramped, but some words stood out. Stalker.
Afraid. Protect me?

 
    “A letter she wrote to my father the month before.
They were together all the time, but he still had a box full of letters she’d
written him on nights they couldn’t stay together. All the ones from that July
and August mentioned this guy who’d been scaring the shit out of her. She
didn’t say who, only referred to him as ‘the guy’. I don’t know if she knew who
he was or not, but she clearly knew someone was following her. Even coming into
her house at night. Leaving threats on her pillow and shit. Wanted her to leave
Dad.”

 
    Now this was interesting.
It clearly put a third party in the mix, someone who wasn’t Pieter who had
already threatened Rhonda, already made it clear that she wasn’t safe.

 
    “How did this not make it into the papers or
anything?” Kim asked, looking up from the letter. Something like this would
have thrown some major doubt on the case built up against Kennick’s father.
Kennick’s jaw set hard as he stared at her.

 
    “This is a small town, Kim,” he said. “Small and
cruel. Dad showed all this to the police. They took some of the letters, and
Dad never heard another damn thing about it. Like it just got tucked away into
some file cabinet. It was just a lot easier to blame him. He said one detective even accused him of being the stalker,
setting it up so that he could kill her and throw the blame on someone else.”

 
    “Rhonda didn’t go to the police about it herself?” Kim
asked.

 
    “Apparently not,” Kennick said. “Dad told her to, but
she was afraid. Whoever it was, he had her scared so shitless that she was
afraid to tell anyone but Dad.”

 
    “But didn’t they search her room? There would have
been some evidence of…”

 
    Kennick shook his head.

 
    “I don’t fuckingknow what they did. All fingers
were pointed at Dad. They thought they had the case locked up. By the time they
got around to exploring other options, Rhonda’s parents had trashed her room in
a fit of grief. Maybe they did