Free Lethal Little Lies (Jubilant Falls Series Book 3) by Debra Gaskill Page B

the house,” he whispered. “Call the police. I don’t know who this is, but—”
                  Ignoring him, I grabbed the flashlight from him and ran to the door, pushing it open.
                  “Hey!” I yelled. “Who ever you are, come out now!”
                  The light from the flashlight fell on the fender of a black Pontiac Solstice and captured a black curly head rising from the front seat of the sports car parked beside the Allis Chalmers.
                  Rick Starrett, normally so smooth and sharp, was rumpled and tired. He stepped out of the Solstice, blinking and rubbing his eyes at the sudden light. Who knows when he pulled into the barn or how long he’d been there. I hadn’t noticed any tracks when I pulled in last night, but then I wasn’t thinking about Rick Starrett any more.
                  “I’m sorry, Penny—I didn’t know where else to go. But, I didn’t do it. I didn’t shoot Virginia Ferguson.”

 
    Chapter 9 Marcus
     
                  It was nearly one in the morning Tuesday and I’d been staring out the window of the waiting room, watching the cars—patients, staff, delivery personnel—come and go in the hospital parking lot when the surgeon came out to tell me Kay made it.
                  The lights hung above the rows of cars parked haphazardly around the cold dirty piles of plowed snow, everything yellowed in the eerie glow. A few blocks to the south I could see the illuminated stone clock tower of the courthouse and the glassy black tower of Aurora Enterprises, the business Kay ran, which provided us with such material wealth.
                  Between them sat the Journal-Gazette . I wondered if Graham Kinnon, who’d been up to see me after Kay went into surgery, had completed his story on Kay. I couldn’t even remember the quote I’d given him.
                  Lillian, Bronson and PJ had gone downstairs to the cafeteria for coffee. Andrew hadn’t arrived yet. I was with my thoughts for a while.
                  As each car came and went, passing into or out of those lights, their color changed, much like I feared my life was changing. Would I have the woman I loved? And who did this to her? What if she didn’t make it? How would the kids and I rebuild what we’d had for so many years? Would our lives retain the same color or would the hue be forever changed?
                  “Mr. Henning?”
                  “Yes?” I couldn’t turn around. If she was gone, I didn’t want to know. I stared at an ambulance, pulling silently into the parking lot. Who was in the back of that vehicle? Were they alive? Dead? Whose heart was being broken as the doors of the emergency room slid open?
                  “Your wife is in recovery. She’s going to be OK.”
                  Breath rushed out of my chest. I leaned my forehead against the cold glass and squeezed my eyes together to keep relieved tears from falling.
                  “We got the bullet—what was left of it—out. She’s lost her spleen, but she’ll do fine without it. There were a couple small nicks to her stomach and intestine, which we sewed up, and she’s lost a lot of blood, but she’s going to be OK. Fortunately, the bullet missed her kidney.”
                  I finally turned around. “Thank you so much.”
                  The doctor was a short, muscular black man with a graying goatee. He wore blue scrubs and surgical cap. Reading glasses sat at the edge of his wide nose and his brown eyes told me he’d seen too many gunshot wounds in his medical career, even here in Jubilant Falls.
                  “I’ve called the police and let them know she’s made it. When she comes to, which should be sometime later in the afternoon, they are going to want to talk to her.” He flipped