Bloodlines Read Online Free PDF Page A

took a slow, deep breath as a soft vow left his lips.
    â€œWe’ll find ’em, baby girl. I promise I won’t let them get away with this.”
    Â 
    Bile hung at the back of Foster Lawrence’s throat as he walked toward the outer gates of Lompoc Federal Prison. He wouldn’t draw a good breath until he was standing in free space and the gates had closed behind him. When he finally passed through them, he swallowed the bile and inhaled with a smile. Even the air smelled different outside those walls.
    For the first time in twenty-five years, still riding on the high of freedom, he started to shake. It was hard to believe, but it was true. It was over. He was free.
    Then he amended the thought. He was free, but it wasn’t over. It would never be over until he got what was owed him. He’d spent all these years behind bars for kidnapping, when the true perpetrator had gone free. And while he admitted he had been a party to acquiring the ransom, he considered he’d been wronged. He hadn’t known that murder had already been done, or that revenge had been the reason. Still, when he’d learned of the outcome, it had been too late to amend his participation.
    When all was said and done, the way he looked at it, there had been little harm in asking for money from a man rich enough to pay it. He had just needed some money to make a new start.
    He’d gotten the money—and the new start. He just hadn’t planned on it being in a federal prison. And while he could have turned evidence against the other person involved, it wouldn’t have changed the outcome of his sentence. So, out of both spite for the powers that be and a sense of obligation, he had kept the rest of the truth to himself and served the sentence, knowing full well that when he got out, the money he’d hidden would all be his, and to hell with old ties and promises. He was out now, and going to take backwhat he’d stashed all those years ago. The way he looked at it, he’d more than earned it.
    As he moved away from the gate, he saw a taxi coming toward him. As soon as it pulled up, he jumped in, gave the driver a destination and never looked back.

3
    T rey’s report to Lieutenant Warren was enough to warrant further investigation but not enough to firmly link the skeletal remains at Lake Texoma to the Sealy kidnapping, although Warren felt in his gut that they were related.
    Sheriff Jenner had faxed the Dallas PD an addendum to the report he’d given Trey and shipped it to Dallas along with the suitcase and the remains. They now had a complete list of the different property owners since the man-made lake and the house had been built, and had identified the owner of the property at the time the baby had been killed. It didn’t prove that the child had been killed on the property, but the body had been hidden there, and it gave them a place to start.
    Warren frowned as he continued to read. According to the notation at the bottom of the page, the owner, David Lehrman, had died in a car crash a year before the Sealy kidnapping. In despondency, his wife, Carol Lehrman, had immediately moved back to her hometown of Boston. For the next three years the house sat empty, until Mrs. Lehrman finally sold it at auction,which was two years after the kidnapping. Instead of narrowing the field, that information blasted it wide open. With the house sitting empty during those three years, anyone could have had access to it. As if that wasn’t enough grief for Lieutenant Warren, he had the media to contend with, as well.
    Stories ran in the newspapers daily, dragging up the old tragedy of the murder of Olivia’s parents during her kidnapping, along with reminders of how broken Marcus Sealy had been by the events. Pictures and film clips of Foster Lawrence’s arrest, as well as the ensuing trial, came next. Then yesterday, a whole new aspect of this case was revealed. It began when a hot-shot