House of Reckoning Read Online Free PDF

forward, she laid her backpack on the conveyor, then hobbled through the detector, which instantly screamed out a loud beeping sound.
    Her hip! Why hadn’t she thought of it before she stepped into the detector? But before she could begin to explain, Kate Williams was grabbing her purse from the X-ray machine and opening it. “She has metal plates in her hip and leg,” she said, handing the doctor’s certificateto the nearest guard, who read it, made a copy of it, then handed it back to Kate.
    “I should have given you this earlier,” Kate said, slipping the certificate into Sarah’s backpack before Sarah proceeded through the detector, then stood still while yet another officer scanned her with a wand. “I can get as many more copies as you need, but you’d probably better keep one with you all the time, given how often everyone gets scanned these days.”
    “Okay,” the guard with the wand said, “go ahead.”
    Sarah shrugged her backpack on and followed Kate into what looked like a shabby school cafeteria.
    A dozen men sat at a dozen round tables, each with four or more plastic chairs. Sarah’s heart hammered in her chest and she nervously ran her tongue over her lower lip as she scanned the faces, looking for her father.
    A gaunt, thin man in the corner stood up, lifting his hand as if in greeting, and for a moment Sarah thought he must be waving at someone else. But then she realized it was her father, though he’d changed so much she barely recognized him. His hair was gone, so short was the buzz cut they’d given him.
    He was much thinner than the last time she’d seen him.
    And his face was pale and drawn.
    “D-Daddy?” she stammered. Then, as his eyes lit up at the sound of her voice, she hurried toward him, ignoring the pain in her hip and leg.
    Ed Crane put his arms around his daughter and lifted her off her feet in a bear hug, and for the first time in months Sarah felt safe. Safe.
    Comfortable. Secure.
    Loved.
    “No touching,” a guard warned, and Sarah’s moment of security instantly collapsed back into the terrible reality of what had happened.
    “I’m sorry,” her father whispered as he lowered her gently back to the floor. Steadying her while she got her balance, he guided her into one of the chairs, then sat beside her, his fingers as close to her hand as he could put them without earning another admonishment from the guard.
    “Thanks for bringing me my little girl,” Ed said to Kate Williams as she joined them at the table.
    “I’m just sorry it couldn’t be sooner,” Kate replied. “But with the rehab—”
    “Kate’s been great,” Sarah cut in, not wanting to waste even a second of her time with her father talking about what she’d been through. She started to slip her hand under her father’s but checked herself just in time as the guard’s warning voice echoed in her mind. Then, as she saw the word INMATE stenciled on his shirt, her eyes welled with tears.
    “Don’t, honey,” Ed Crane whispered. “Everything’s going to be—” he went on before his voice broke.
    “I’ll be okay,” Sarah said, struggling against her tears. “It’s just—” Now it was her voice that broke, and she quickly reached into her backpack and pulled out a piece of paper rolled into a tube. “I made you this while I was learning to walk again,” she said, handing it to her father as one of the guards stepped closer to monitor what was going on.
    “Just seeing you is enough for me,” Ed said. “How’s your leg? Does it hurt?”
    “A little,” she admitted as her father unrolled the paper.
    “She’s doing very well,” Kate said, reading Ed Crane’s anguish at what he’d done to his daughter. “She isn’t even using her crutches anymore.”
    But Ed was no longer listening. Instead he was staring down at the picture he’d flattened out on the table. It was of Sarah, and her eyes seemed to be smiling up at him with some kind of internal light, even from the thick