Deadly Abandon Read Online Free PDF Page A

if they saw her right now. Damn it, Bree, pull yourself together!
    Five minutes later, she was back behind the wheel and almost to her door. She veered onto the cedar-lined drive, pulled up in front of the garage, and killed the engine. Sliding out of the Pathfinder, Cody’s Golden Retriever moseyed up to greet her. She patted Bear and used her trusty bottle of Visine to disguise the fact she’d been bawling her eyes out.
    Turning her key in the lock, she pasted a smile on her face and followed the sounds and aromas coming from the kitchen. The men were cooking up a storm; the kitchen rated as a disaster area with the dirtied pots and cluttered counters.
    “Hey, something smells good.”
    “It’s our own special recipe,” her son answered, withdrawing his head from the oven. “You’d probably call it baked macaroni and cheese with sun-dried tomatoes, but Gramps and I call it baked barf.”
    “Right you are,” her father chuckled. He paused at the sink to wipe a smudge of tomato from the bridge of his nose. “It has the same consistency.”
    “Dad! Cody doesn’t need any help from you in the gross-out department. He does fine on his own.”
    Breeana hugged her father and planted a kiss on his handsome face. He was dressed casually in chinos, a Hawaiian print shirt and sport sandals. She noted Cody had used the sculpting gel on his grandfather’s hair again. Sixty-three and a widower, her dad still turned his share of female heads. “You’re supposed to set an example for your grandson, not encourage him.”
    Her father cocked an eyebrow and harrumphed, before winking at Cody over her head. Breeana ignored both of them, surveyed the messy scene of the kitchen, and frowned.
    “We’re missing a major food group here. I smell garlic bread and I see the macaroni but I do not see veggies. Come on you two, set the table in the sunroom while I toss a salad and open a bottle of Merlot.”
    “All right!” Cody’s fist pumped the air.
    “Nice try. You’re drinking milk, kiddo.”
    Dinner discussion was murder, literally, once she announced in as calm a voice as she could that Rainey was dead.
    Cody put down his fork and looked from her to his grandfather and back again. “Are you sure?”
    “Yes, honey. Lieutenant Sauvage told me after you left the clinic today.”
    “God, that’s crappy. We should keep Bruiser with us then. There’s no one else to take care of him.”
    Thank God for the simplicity of a child’s thought processes. Cody insulated himself against the tragedy, breaking down the details to focus on what he could control. Rainey’s death, combined with Miranda’s, was a terrible blow. The fact he’d lost his father a few years earlier only compounded the grief of this newest loss.
    Her son took advantage of Breeana’s silence to fill his grandfather in on the day’s events, including meeting Lieutenant Sauvage. She tried hard to stay in the here and now. It wasn’t easy. Miranda and Rainey consumed her thoughts.
    While Cody cleared away the dishes and loaded the dishwasher, her father turned his attention on her. “You’re not saying much, pumpkin. I can’t begin to imagine how upset you must be.”
    “Rainey must have died horribly, Dad.”
    “I hear you.”He leaned forward, placed his elbows on the table, and clasped her icy fingers in his warm palms. “I know she was a close friend. Are you going to be all right?”
    “Of course I am.” She held back the tears and swallowed hard. “Even if I do want to crawl in bed, hide under the covers, and cry for a week. It’s hard to lose both of them. We grew up together…I loved them.”
    “I know, pumpkin.” Breeana focused on his thumb rubbing circles on her hand.
    “Bree, you should talk to the homicide lieutenant about Miranda. It seems too much of a coincidence the women died within a month of each other. I’m telling you, I don’t like it.”
    “I plan to tell him. I just hope he believes me and doesn’t listen to those jerk