Baltimore [3.5] Broken Silence Read Online Free PDF Page A

steal them from the luggage and she said they weren’t in the luggage and for me not to worry myself about them. That they were safe.
    ‘And yes, before you ask me again, I even saw her wear them once when we were at the beach. She was sitting on a beach chair bundled up in blankets, wearing the necklace and the earrings. When we brought her back to the hotel room, her husband took them off her and left the room. Told me to stay and “make his wife comfortable.” When he came back, he didn’t have the jewelry, so it must have been hidden somewhere in the luggage, despite what they said.’
    ‘We’ve checked the luggage,’ Brock said in disgust. ‘We’ve checked her purse and that stupid baby’s stupid diaper bag. We ripped apart every damn doll the brat brought with her. We checked the clothes they were wearing. They weren’t there.’
    ‘Then they’re in the Mercedes.’ They’d burned the Smirnovs in an old junk heap and had driven away in the Mercedes SUV that Smirnov had bought with cash before leaving Rochester.
    The day after the Mayo Clinic had told Tatiana to put her personal affairs in order.
    ‘Dammit!’ Brock threw the beer bottle at the wall in a fit of anger. ‘I’ve taken that Mercedes apart down to the rivets and there is no jewelry !’
    Amber flinched. She was seeing this side of Brock more often, these fits of rage that came from the ‘supplements’ he took every damn day. He’d promised he’d only take the steroids until he bulked up.
    That had been four years ago and he was using more and more. It used to be only the expense that worried her. Now she worried about Brock’s self-control.
    ‘Let’s take a break, baby. Calm down,’ she said softly.
    ‘I am calm.’ He slumped at the table, his head in his hands. ‘Damn.’
    Amber got a rag and went to clean the mess the beer had made on the wall. No reason to alert the homeowners – whoever they were – that they’d had guests while they were gone for their Christmas vacation. ‘We know they didn’t leave the jewelry in that last hotel room at the beach because we took it apart, too.’
    ‘There’s only one other place we haven’t searched.’ Brock lifted his head and stared at her through hardened, accusing eyes. ‘The brat. Lana. She must have hidden it somewhere when she ran away. But we can’t ask her where, now can we? Because we don’t have her any more.’
    Amber threw the rag in the sink, angry now. ‘You’re blaming me again?’
    ‘It was your responsibility to keep the kids in the damn Mercedes! You weren’t watching her, so she ran away. Yes, I’m blaming you!’
    ‘I gave her some fruit juice with a sedative. She should have been fast asleep.’
    ‘Well she wasn’t asleep,’ Brock said bitterly. ‘And you let her get away.’
    ‘I had to choose. I couldn’t drop the baby and run after her.’ Lana had been hysterical when she’d seen her father shot and had taken off running, too fast for Amber to keep up. Why hadn’t Lana just gone to sleep? ‘A six-month-old is worth a lot more than a six-year-old.’
    ‘Yeah, but the six-year-old can talk . She can tell the cops our names .’
    ‘She won’t,’ Amber insisted. ‘She’s too scared to. I made sure of that.’
    ‘Yeah, by walking up and down the halls of the hospital with her baby sister. Real scary, Amber.’
    ‘I told her if she talked we’d kill the baby, just like her parents. I took a big risk sneaking into her hospital room that first day. So don’t yell at me about letting her get away.’ She dropped her voice, because she’d been shouting, too. ‘You’ll wake up the baby.’
    ‘I’ll yell if I damn well want to,’ he muttered. ‘It was a stupid idea to go into that hospital.’
    ‘So you’ve said, every day for the last four days. Would you rather I just let her tell?’
    ‘No,’ he snarled. ‘I would rather you not have lost the bitch in the first place. Now your face is on the hospital cameras, too. We’d