Dead End Read Online Free PDF Page B

together, you’ll have had time to read them through. Maybe something will pop out at you.”
    “Sounds like a plan.”
    “Evan, I can’t thank you enough. For understanding. For putting your own feelings aside—I know this has to be hard for you.”
    “Not nearly as hard as the thought of losing you.”
    “You wouldn’t have lost me over this. My loving you is separate from wanting what’s right for Dylan.”
    “I know that, but I also understand that you’ll never be completely happy as long as you feel he’s not at rest, Annie. I know your Irish soul.”
    “It’s his Irish soul that worries me. I just need to know it’s found peace.”
    “We’re going to do our best.”
    “One thing you need to know . . .”
    “What’s that?”
    “I am happy with you, I’ve been happy with you. And I do love you. Without reservation. Regardless of the outcome, I will never forget that you offered to do this, with the case you’re already working on. I don’t know any other man who would be as sensitive as you are to this whole thing with Dylan.”
    The crime-scene technicians had finished processing the scene and signaled that they were waiting for him.
    “Annie, I have to go. You get those reports and send them up; I’ll find the time to look them over. Then we’ll talk . . .”
    Dan Crimmons, the Prattsville chief of police, was walking up the hill toward him. Evan knew he’d have a million questions about the crime scenes in Lyndon and the other parts of the county where bodies had been found. In the distance, he could see the lights from the cars parked along the road. Newspaper, magazine, and TV reporters and their cameramen were gathering again.
    Evan switched off his phone and walked down the hill to meet Crimmons, thinking that his instincts had served him well. Annie wouldn’t be completely at peace until Dylan was. He would give it his best effort.
    It hadn’t been false modesty on his part to say that he felt a bit presumptuous, taking on something that the Bureau’s finest had already looked into. Dylan’s brothers and cousins were all known to be top-notch agents. What were the chances he’d succeed where they had all failed? If it helped Annie to know that they’d done their best, and that helped her to move on, what did they have to lose?
    Nothing at all, he reassured himself as he walked down the hill, his hand extended in greeting to the chief.
    “Chief Crimmons, I see the sharks are right on the scent. How many officers do you think you can spare to keep the press from getting anywhere near the crime scene . . . ?”
     
    Annie scooped the folder into her arms and strolled casually back to her office. It wasn’t that she was doing anything wrong—she did sign out the file—but she was just a little reluctant to advertise the fact that she was looking over the records relative to Dylan’s death yet again. People might think she was obsessed.
    She read through the now-familiar reports, looking for something, anything, that might catch her eye. But there was nothing out of the ordinary. She’d read through the accounts of the agents who were present that night, including Aidan, who had been badly wounded and at one point, early on, wasn’t expected to make it. Thank God he did, Annie thought. Losing Dylan had been hard enough. Aidan had been her friend long before he’d become her brother-in-law.
    The alarm on her watch reminded her that she had a lecture to deliver to a group of agents-in-training at two. She closed the file and pushed it to one side of her desk, then grabbed her purse from the back of her chair.
    “Hey, Annie, how’s it going?” Brendan Shields poked his head in through the doorway.
    “Great, Brendan, thanks. I was just on my way to—”
    “Was that a great wedding or what? And Mara was just the most beautiful bride. Dylan would have been pleased to see his little brother married to your little sister. Funny, isn’t it, the way that worked out?”
    “I guess