L.A.P.D. Special Investigations Series, Boxed Set: The Deceived, The Taken & The Silent Read Online Free PDF Page A

he loved his life with us.
    “That man may resemble my husband, Detective, and he may have the same name, but that’s where any similarity ends.”
    “There could be mitigating circumstances.”
    “Like what?” she spat, angry and hurt and confused and hating the man pressuring her to do something abhorrent. “Jack would never have willingly left us, his family. Not without a gun to his head.”
    “Another possibility,” Ramsey said softly.
    Tears welled in her eyes, but she forced them back. “The man in that photograph has no gun to his head. So…so I think that possibility can be ruled out. Now, please go.” She thrust the photo at him.
    “Okay.” He set down the glass and went to the door where he stood for a moment before saying, “I’ll be in town for another day, then I’m heading back to L.A.” He laid a card on the small table by the door. “The number where I’m staying is on the back of the card. I sincerely hope you’ll change your—”
    “Please…go.”

 
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER THREE
     
     
    JILLIAN SAT ON THE couch for the longest time listening to the click, click, click of the fan oscillating from side to side, wishing she’d had the presence of mind to look more closely at the photos. The man couldn’t be Rob…and maybe there was something in the photo to prove it.
    The fact that the pictures were taken after his death should be proof enough of that. Shouldn’t it?
    She balled her hands into fists. She should never have talked to the Detective. He’d lied to her to get inside, said he wanted to do further testing to uncover something new about her husband’s murderer, when what he really wanted was to dig up and defile what was left of her husband’s body in order to prove it wasn’t her husband who’d died in the crash. Why should she believe anything he said when he’d lied to serve his own purpose?
    But if he believed there was more to it, then did he believe she’d been lied to by the police? That everything they’d told her had been a lie?
    Empty bullet casings were found near the highway where Rob’s truck went over the cliff, so the LAPD had concluded a sniper shot at Rob and caused the accident. Two years of so-called investigation and they had no other evidence, no reason to suspect anything other than one deranged person playing God with people’s lives. And they couldn’t track him down.
    After years of frustration about Rob’s senseless death, knowing his killer would never be caught, she’d finally found peace within herself. She had a daughter to raise, Rob’s daughter, and she couldn’t do it well if she was railing at the world about something she couldn’t change.
    The detective was wrong. Dead wrong. He didn’t know Rob. He didn’t know that her husband would never have deceived her like that. He would never have left his family, not for anything. After thirteen years together, she’d known her husband as well as she knew herself.
    Still…someone impersonating Rob was within the realm of possibility, wasn’t it? Hard to imagine that kind of thing ever happened outside of the movies, but it could happen.
    Myriad questions swirled through her brain. If this was someone impersonating Rob, who was the man in the photograph? She imagined one bizarre scenario after another, most of which she’d seen in a movie at some time or another. All within the realm of possibility.
    Rob could’ve picked up a hitchhiker who’d killed him, run the truck over the cliff with his body inside and was now impersonating him. What if someone had hijacked the truck and in the crash he’d died, but Rob had been thrown out and wasn’t dead? What if he hadn’t died and wandered off in the desert somewhere and died…or what if he was wandering around with amnesia and used the only name he knew to start another life?
    As surreal as it sounded, things like amnesia did happen, too. Four years ago, Dana and Logan’s daughter, Hallie, had suffered amnesia after a