Dana Marton - Broslin Creek 05 - Broslin Bride Read Online Free PDF Page A

and dents, but the damage to the front was definitely new. Gone and done it.  
    Cold panic cut through her, an ice blade. She’d done a horrible, terrible, despicable thing. Guilt and regret made her knees wobble. Whatever the punishment was, she deserved it.
    Except, she couldn’t go to prison. She had her four-year-old twin sisters to take care of. She was Mia and Daisy’s sole guardian.
    Luanne drew air in big, gulping breaths to wrestle down the shock and nausea. Get moving. One foot in front of the other. She couldn’t stand there and stare all morning. She had to find a way to get away with murder.  
    Her head pounded, her mind in a stunned haze. Her fight-or-flight response was firmly locked into the flight setting. She stopped by the car. Squinted. Was that blood on the bumper? Her stomach rolled again.
    If she was put away, the twins would go to foster care. They were cute and young. They’d be adopted out faster than she could say “termination of guardianship.” She’d never see them again.
    The thought brought a new flash of pain coursing through her body.
    She felt guilty as hell, horrible about what happened to Earl. She wished more than anything that she could take it back. She deserved to go to prison, she really did. But she wasn’t going to give up the twins. Not ever.
    Nobody could find out what she’d done.
    As panic gripped her hard in its cold clutches, her gaze fastened onto the fire hydrant. Nobody could ever find out.  
    She squared her shoulders, then looked up and down the quiet dead-end street. Not a soul in sight. She slid behind the wheel, revved the engine, and, pedal to the metal, drove straight forward.
    The crash rattled her brain, threatening to split her head in half, the explosion of water instantaneous. She leaned back in her seat, not having to bother with airbags, the car too old to have any.
    Oh God. Fighting back tears, she closed her eyes and waited for any incriminating blood residue to be washed away by a thousand gallons of water.  
    After a minute or two of sheer misery, she filled her lungs, put the car in reverse and backed away. She had to get to the motel. The police were waiting.
    On her way over, she called the fire department to report the hydrant accident, cringing as she lied through her teeth.
    What’s next? Her brain felt like gelatin. This here was why she didn’t normally drink.  
    Think.
    Who’d be at the motel? Probably Captain Bing. Murder was big news in Broslin. She didn’t care who came, as long as it wasn’t Chase Merritt.
    She’d gone to high school with Chase.
    She’d been in love with Chase.
    She’d lost her virginity to Chase.
    That last bit hadn’t gone well. Afterward, she’d shared her disappointment with Jen, blaming Chase for the lack of earthshaking pleasure she’d read about in romance novels. Unfortunately, Jen told her other friends, and the rumor spread that Chase was less than adequate between the sheets. He hadn’t been amused.
    Luanne wasn’t one of his favorite people. Mostly, through the years that had passed since, he’d avoided her.
    She didn’t need to think about that now. But as she shoved the past aside and turned her focus to the trouble she was in, a heart-stopping thought popped into her head.
    Had there been witnesses?
    Her muscles froze. Oh God.  
    No. Wait. If there’d been a witness, Luanne decided, she would have been woken by the police knocking on her door, instead of Jackie’s phone call.  
    Okay. So, very likely, nobody had seen her in the alley. A lucky break.  
    She had no alibi, but so what. Earl had been murdered in the middle of the night, and she was home alone. Plenty of people were home alone in the middle of the night. That shouldn’t be overly suspicious.
    The damage to her car…hopefully, she’d taken care of that. She made a mental note to donate money to the fire department, even if she had to scrape it together a penny at a time.
    What else? She was too nervous, her brain