No One Left to Tell Read Online Free PDF Page B

what Elena had seen. He wanted to know if he was in any way implicated. And I always get what I want .
    Tuesday, April 5, 7.30 A.M .
     
    ‘Here. Drink this.’
    Paige glanced away from her living-room window to take the cup of hot tea from Clay’s hands. It was the third cup he’d forced on her as she’d watched the police processing the crime scene through the blinds, thinking about the flash drive in her pocket, and wondering what the hell to do.
    She’d watched the videos. She knew exactly who’d taken the one of her jumping. The kid upstairs had a crush and always carried a camcorder. Once she’d caught him taping her walking Peabody late at night. She’d thought she’d scared Logan Booker from future videotaping by threatening to tell his mother. I guess not .
    She hadn’t seen Elena’s flash-drive hand-off in Logan’s video or any of the others shot with the cell phones behind her. Thank God for Peabody . He’d kept the vultures far enough away that none of Elena’s words had been caught on tape.
    Still, they’d captured Elena’s murder, her brains splattering against the windows of her van. The videos were online, viewable by anyone. Including the Muñoz family. It made Paige’s heart ache to think about them seeing Elena die.
    Clay nudged her shoulder. ‘Drink it,’ he repeated.
    She sipped the tea obediently. ‘I’m going to float away,’ she murmured.
    ‘You should have let that doctor check you out.’
    ‘I wasn’t hurt. Just rattled. Anyone would have been.’
    ‘You could have been killed.’ His voice was raw and she knew he was reliving finding his old partner’s body.
    ‘But I wasn’t. And I don’t think I would have been. I’d just turned to look at Peabody when the killer pulled the trigger. A second earlier I’d been leaning over Elena.’
    His eyes widened. ‘Like he was waiting for you to get out of the way?’
    ‘Exactly.’ She let the warmth from the cup seep into her cold fingers as she looked back to the crime scene. ‘The MEs are finally taking her. It’s about time.’
    ‘It was a messy crime scene,’ Clay said. ‘They needed to be careful.’
    ‘“Messy” would be the word.’
    ‘If you’re worried about the videos, don’t be. You’ll be an internet sensation for a day, maybe two. Then some starlet will go into rehab and it’ll be over.’
    ‘That’s not what I’m worried about,’ she said quietly.
    ‘Somehow I didn’t really think so.’ He was studying her intently. ‘So let’s get to it. You told that detective that she hadn’t said anything to you,’ he said. ‘You lied. Why?’
    Paige pulled her phone from her pocket and laid it on the windowsill. At some point her call to Clay had been terminated. She had no idea when. ‘How much did you hear?’
    ‘Only you. Her voice was too faint. You asked who’d done it. What did she say?’
    Paige ran her fingers over her pocket, feeling the outline of the flash drive. Abruptly she stepped back from the blinds and met his eyes. ‘“Cops. Chasing me.”’
    His frown was immediate and severe. ‘A cop shot her?’
    ‘No. She said that a cop chased her. I assumed the chaser and the shooter were the same. Then the medics arrived and that other shot came out of fucking nowhere.’
    ‘Same shooter?’ Clay asked and she shrugged.
    ‘I don’t know. One of my first thoughts was that the shooter had to be close, that Elena couldn’t have driven far with injuries like those.’ She paused, thinking. ‘It might have been the same shooter, but not the same gun. The entry wounds in her torso were bigger than the final hit to her temple. The exit wounds in her body were . . . smaller.’
    ‘I’d guess the final shot was made by a high-speed rifle. The cops were all over the rooftops, looking for signs of the shooter. They’re scared right now, the cops. I heard a couple of them wondering if they had another serial sniper.’
    Paige frowned, not understanding, then she remembered the DC sniper.