Hold on to Me Read Online Free PDF

her transfer to the local state university. She liked to flirt and she liked to party.”
    “She liked older men, too.” A taunting leer lurked around Cookie’s mouth. “Didn’t she, Tick?”
    “Shut up, Cookie.”
    Unease shivered along Caitlin’s nerve endings. “Were you involved with her?”
    “No.”
    Cookie rubbed a finger over his bottom lip. “Not for a lack of trying.”
    On whose part? She swallowed the question and dropped her gaze from Tick’s. What he did, who he saw, was none of her business anymore. But he had to know he couldn’t work a murder case where he’d been involved with the victim.
    “You have to tell her the story.” Wicked amusement laced Cookie’s voice.
    “Holy hell, Cookie, sometimes you talk too damn much.” Tick’s anger seemed to hover in the air. “It was no big deal. Yeah, Amy made a play for me. The last time I had to go by to see Tommy, she met me at the door.”
    “Wearing only the bottom to her itsy-bitsy bikini and a great big smile,” Cookie added for him, earning an inarticulate growl of frustration from his colleague.
    “Like Tick said, no big deal. Amy lived for being outrageous.” Jeff’s calm tone soothed the rising tension in the room. “She’s hit on just about every guy in the county over twenty-five and under fifty. She wasn’t into guys her age.”
    Which meant a huge field of possible suspects, and maybe the possibility that her death wasn’t related to the others.
    Caitlin flipped to the next page in the file, a missing person’s report, Tick’s slashing signature at the bottom. “What were the circumstances of her death?”
    “She didn’t come home Tuesday night.” Tick cleared his throat. “Her daddy had half the law enforcement agencies in this end of the state looking for her. We found her car that night in the parking lot of the local football stadium. Like Sharon, a farmer found her body Wednesday afternoon in thick underbrush. He was cutting a fire break.”
    She frowned over the folder. Having all of this would have been helpful before she’d come down here, if ADIC Frazier hadn’t been in such a rush for her to head out, to soothe Tommy Gillabeaux’s political screaming. “There’s no autopsy report.”
    “Hasn’t been done yet.” Cookie shrugged. “Backlog at the crime lab. We don’t have Sharon Ingler’s, either.”
    She looked up. “How much of a backlog?”
    “Williams is talking about a week on the short side before she even gets to the preliminary.”
    “A week?” She should have brought Ransome, the medical examiner and resident lab geek on her team, with her. “Any idea on the cause of death for both girls? Same as your Jane Doe?”
    “Looks like strangulation.” Tick turned to scatter crime scene photos across the table. He arranged close-up pictures of the girls’ torsos side-by-side.
    Caitlin examined the bruising on each victim. “But not garroted.”
    “No, and not manual strangulation either. No finger marks. He used his forearm against the windpipe.” Tick laid his wrist lightly against her throat to demonstrate.
    Caitlin jerked away. His eyes widened and she swallowed, sure the memories and horror lingered on her face. “Thanks but I don’t need the visual.”
    She attempted a nonchalant smile and an ironic tone, but her voice quivered.
    “Sorry.” Tick frowned, his gaze thoughtful, piercing, assessing. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
    “No problem.” She gave a scoffing laugh, aware they had captured Cookie and Jeff’s rapt attention. She ran a finger over the round mark on Sharon’s throat, darker than the other contusions. “They all have the same bruise pattern.”
    “Probably his watch.” Something indefinable, a soft questioning perhaps, remained in Tick’s voice, but she refused to look at him.
    She tilted her head, still eyeing the bruise. “Maybe he’s left handed.”
    “They weren’t quick deaths.” Anger colored Cookie’s quiet statement. “He toyed with