Hush Read Online Free PDF Page A

going to be okay, Em,” Riley promised her sister-­in-law quietly, while Margaret held her daughter close and murmured what comforting words she could. Jeff hadn’t told his mother or sister about his conviction that George’s associates were being bumped off, because he hadn’t wanted to worrythem, and Riley hadn’t told them that she was actually the one who had found Jeff’s body: after she’d gotten well away from the house, an anonymous call (from her, on her ID-blocked cell) had alerted the police, who had officially discovered it. Nevertheless, Margaret and Emma shared her certainty that Jeff had been murdered, because they knew him as well as she did—and because the thought that he had killed himself was just too dreadful for them to bear. If they knew what she knew they would never let the matter rest. She was afraid that delving too deeply into Jeff’s death might make them targets.
    She was afraid that delving too deeply into Jeff’s death might make her a target. It was kind of like that if-a-tree-falls-in-a-forest-where-no-one-can-hear-it-does-it-make-a-sound thing: if no one knew that Jeff had told her all his suspicions, that she had his phone, which contained the connect-the-dots material he had put together on the other questionable deaths and possibly photos of his killers and who knew what information besides, did that mean she was in danger anyway?
    There was no way anyone could know that she had been the one to find Jeff’s body. There was no way anyone could know that she’d taken Jeff’s phone. There was no way anyone could know what was on that phone.
    Was there?
    Once the funeral was over, once her brain fog had lifted, she meant to go through the material on Jeff’s phone with a fine-tooth comb.
    But then she looked back at Margaret and Emma huddled together, and thought maybe she wouldn’t. After all, nothing she found would bring Jeff back. She had herself and Margaret andEmma to think about now. Maybe it would be best to simply let a murdered ex-husband lie.
    â€œI miss him so much,” Emma sobbed into her mother’s shoulder.
    Riley’s insides twisted. For the three of them, Jeff’s death was the ultimate nightmare, the culmination of nearly a year of terrible events, and if one of them openly broke now under the weight of it, the only surprising thing about it would be that it hadn’t happened sooner.
    Father Snyder said, “Let us pray.”
    Riley bowed her head at the priest’s directive. But the last thing in the world she felt like doing was praying, and her eyes stayed open. As Father Snyder’s voice filled the air, she scanned the crowd. Impossible to say who she resented more: the unabashedly curious who, like her, ignored the directive to pray and kept craning their necks, or the reporters and camera crews that mingled with the crowd as if they had every right to be there, or Margaret’s contingent of exquisitely coiffed and dressed high-­society friends, only a very few of whom had bothered to stay in touch after George’s arrest, or the snotty mean-girl group from Emma’s expensive private high school who were obviously eating the whole thing up, or the dark-suited law enforcement types who stood out in this sea of dark-suited men because of their square-shouldered posture, their closed expressions and watchful eyes.
    She was equal opportunity, Riley decided: she hated them all.
    Her eyes collided with the glance of a tall, powerfully built man who was staring straight at her. His face was harsh-featured, too grim at the moment to be described as handsome, with broad, Slavic cheekbones and a hard mouth above a square jaw. His darkhair was cut ruthlessly short, and he had a deep, real-looking tan, as if he spent a lot of time outdoors. She guessed him to be in his late thirties, and she was as sure as it was possible to be that she had never seen him before in her life. He