Lethal Little Lies (Jubilant Falls Series Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page A

pushed myself up on my elbows. I was lying face down in the vomit-green bathtub of a cheap motel. A thin line of blood and snot extended from my throbbing nose to the floor of the tub. My right eye was swollen shut and I tasted the blood and raw meat of my lips.
                  I didn’t remember a beating. I remembered being told to pull over, an odd, sweet smell and then darkness.
    I pushed myself up using the side of the tub and stood, gasping as I caught a glimpse of my battered face in the bathroom mirror. Blood dried brown on the front of my velour blue sweatshirt. Was I bleeding when my captor put me in here or was I dumped into the tub, my wounds the result of striking the awful floor of the tub?
                  I ran my fingers through my hair, recoiling as I felt a line of dried blood at the base of my skull.
                  I remembered Sunday night.
                  When he grabbed me, the knife kept me from turning around and seeing what he looked like as he’d ordered me into the van. I could smell his rancid body odor and his breath, each time he snapped at me, the smell of alcohol and un-brushed teeth turned my stomach.
    “Don’t look at me!” he rasped. The knifepoint slid up to the back of my scalp. Sharp, short pain shot across the back of my head and I gasped as I felt him nick me. A thin trickle of blood slid down my neck, pooling briefly in my collar before sliding warmly down my back.
                  “Drive,” he ordered.
                  “Please, let me go!” I begged. “Please! I’ll give you the van!”
                  He ignored my plea. “Turn here.”
              I did as he said.
                  “Turn again.”
                  I didn’t recognize where we were. The roads were dark and wooded. I’d never seen this part of Plummer County, if that was where we were.
                  “Where are you taking me?”
                  The knife pressed into the base of my skull again. I gasped.
                  “Shut up,” he said. “Turn here. Park it and get out. Don’t turn around to look at me or I’ll kill you.”
                  I did as he said. I felt him grab a fistful of the back of my down jacket, an odd sweet smell, and then everything went black.
                  Now, I was face down in this bathtub and daylight was fading in the bathroom’s single window. Had I missed all of Monday?
                  Suddenly all I could think of was my kids. Would I see them again? I thought of Andrew, tall and so handsome in his flight suit. Would the Air Force let him come home for my funeral?
                  In two steps, I was at the door of the bathroom. I grabbed the knob and yanked. Locked. Shit.
                  On the other side of the door, I heard a grunt of angry frustration and a phone being hung up in anger.
                  What about PJ, my darling, darling PJ—his wry sense of humor, his geekiness, his brilliance? I hadn’t brought him into the world—I’d simply brought him to mine but he’d been such a blessing. Would I be there to see him graduate from college? Whatever was bothering him at MIT, we couldn’t work it out unless I got out of this alive.
                  And Lillian, silly Lillian, so like her grandmother, impressed with the worldly goods her New York boyfriend had and the world that a Barnard education opened up for her. Marcus and I were certain they’d get married—God, she couldn’t get married if I wasn’t there! I wanted to see her standing at the altar, looking into the face of the man she loved.
                  Marcus . None of it would matter if I didn’t have Marcus. What had happened to us that we’d drifted so far apart? It didn’t matter now. I didn’t care if it was another woman,