Broken Honor Read Online Free PDF Page A

of anyone who might want to do you harm?” the police detective asked for the tenth time. “A boyfriend? Anyone?”
    She shook her head. It had been a long time since she’d had a serious relationship, and that one ended by mutual consent. He’d received a job offer in another city, and neither was committed enough to the other to marry and give up a career.
    â€œKeep thinking about it. No matter how far-fetched,” Jim Evans, the frustrated detective, insisted.
    She nodded. How could she help not thinking about it? She doubted, though, if she would come up with any kind of answer. She liked almost everyone and everyone seemed to like her, although she had few really close friends.
    â€œYou haven’t found any clues at all?” she asked. “You’re absolutely sure it was intentionally set? I had a gas grill,” she added hopefully. “Maybe a leak.…”
    He shook his head. “The fire investigators found traces of accelerant at the side of the house. It looked professional.” He hesitated. “Is there anything you might be working on that someone might not like?”
    â€œPeople don’t set fires because they don’t like a historian’s take on the past,” she said. “There’s nothing that should upset anyone, certainly not enough for arson.”
    â€œBut someone did set a fire,” he said.
    She bit her lip. She still couldn’t imagine what anyone might want, what motive anyone might have for hurting her.
    â€œWas there anything on your home computer that wasn’t on the office computer?” he asked.
    â€œJust some notes on a book I plan to write. Almost everything was backed up on my office computer.”
    â€œYou haven’t received any suspicious E-mail? Threats?”
    â€œNo. None of the above. I really live an uneventful life, Detective.”
    His eyes narrowed. “Can our people look through those computer files?”
    She knew they couldn’t do so without a search warrant, and she was the victim, not the perpetrator. “After I back them up.”
    â€œAnd you didn’t have any other papers in your house?”
    â€œNot that would interest anyone,” she said. For a moment she thought of the boxes of World War II documents she’d saved from her grandfather’s attic years ago. Another professor had had them for months. But she didn’t want to bring Jon Foster’s research into this. Her fifty-year-old papers couldn’t have had anything to do with the fire. With the exception of Jon and Sherry, no one even knew she had them. He certainly had no reason to harm her.
    The detective stood. “We’re questioning people we know like to set fires,” he said. “It could just be a firebug who struck at random.”
    That was the first comforting thought he’d offered, even if it was disconcerting to think someone would cause such destruction for a thrill. It was better than the alternative, however. She nodded. “That must be it,” she said.
    His expression expressed some doubt. “Could be, Miss Mallory, but I think you should be careful. And if you think of anything, anything at all, call me.”
    â€œI will,” she assured him.
    She hugged herself against the cold that had settled deep inside her and started for her temporary lodgings. She’d borrowed a friend’s laptop to use at the hotel. She didn’t want to work in the darkened halls of the university—not now—and she felt reasonably safe in the hotel. And Bojangles was there.
    She found herself doing something she had never done before. She looked at everyone with suspicion: the driver of every car, even pedestrians walking near the hotel. She wondered whether she would ever stop looking now, and that question filled her with anger. No one had the right to do that to her, to change the way she looked at the world.
    Bojangles barked when she arrived at her room.