Carolyn Arnold - McKinley 04 - Politics is Murder Read Online Free PDF Page B

himself thinking this way, but things were coming together.
    “We don’t need the money.” She reiterated his earlier words and placed her hand on his forearm as she leaned over for a kiss.
    She seemed to savor it as much as he did, pulling back a while later. When she did, the spark of a detective was in her eyes. “Let’s find this girl and bring her home, darling.”
    “Excellent idea.” He put the car into gear and rolled out of the estate.

 
     
     

     
    Talking It Out
     
    THEY WERE BACK AT SEAN’S rental house with the list of Davenport’s haters spread out on the table in front of them.
    “It’s hard to believe one man has so many enemies.” Sara dropped onto a kitchen chair, a fresh coffee in her hands.
    “Five typed pages, single-spaced, and these are only the ones he knows about.”
    Sara sliced a look across the table. “Interesting comment. It’s probably one of them who is behind this.”
    “You’re likely right, darling.”
    “Let’s talk this out, then. We’ve got a young woman, nineteen, away at university,” Sara began.
    “It already sounds like trouble,” Sean opined with a smile.
    Sara angled her head to her shoulder. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”
    “Pretend away.” He winked at her.
    “You think just because you’re charming, you can get away with anything?”
    “Do you blame a guy for trying?” He got up and walked behind her, massaging her shoulders briefly, before bending over and kissing her.
    She pulled back. “You could do that all day.”
    “Yes, but I’d rather—” He went for her mouth, but she was giggling.
    “I was referring to—” She tapped her fingers on her right shoulder.
    “You are such a tease.” He knotted his hands, working them into her tense muscles. “Why are you so tight anyway?”
    “Regular exercise.”
    “Now who is being funny?”
    Her smile faded as she made eye contact with him. “It’s just this case. We’re trying to find a girl—the daughter of the mayor, no less—and we don’t even know what happened to her.”
    He walked back to his chair and sat across from her. “You probably already do. What is your gut telling you?”
    She took a long, drawn-out sip on her coffee. She seemed hesitant to voice her opinion.
    “You have strong intuition. Please, darling,” he encouraged her.
    “I think she’s alive. I really do. Now, whether she’s being held by someone against her will, or she’s made a run for it, I’m not one hundred percent certain.”
    “Sounds logical to me.”
    She nodded. “We’ve got to figure out which it is, though.”
    “Well, think of it like this, either way, her loved ones are pained from her absence. We are going to bring them closure. That’s a good thing.”
    “I agree. I just don’t want to accept that she’s dead somewhere.” Her eyes drifted off and he could tell she was deep in thought.
    “The cop part of you knows that’s a possibility.”
    She drained the rest of the coffee and lowered the mug to the table. “Let’s start with what we do know. Her dorm room didn’t show any signs of a struggle.”
    “She left willingly from there.”
    “Or she didn’t disappear from there.” Sara made three columns on the notepad in front of her, labeling them, Kidnapping , Run Away , and Murder .
    Under the Run Away column she wrote: left dorm willingly.
    Under Kidnapping : knew kidnapper?
    She tapped the end of the pen against the page. “We know that the mayor had enemies, but what we have to figure out is whether her going missing has to do with him, or with her?” She scribbled the word motive in the top right-hand corner and drew a balloon around it.
    “Now, we know her father had enemies, but with all of this,” Sean ran his hand over the sheets, “it makes it a little overwhelming to start there.”
    “Let’s just start with what we know.”
    By her comment, he was certain his face disclosed the confusion he felt.
    She smiled and reached her hand across