Nowhere Safe Read Online Free PDF

then he glanced away, as if he were thinking hard. “White . . .”
    “You don’t sound too sure,” Wes pointed out.
    “It was dark. I couldn’t really see. But shh . . . No, I’m certain he was white.” He jerked away from them as if he couldn’t stand in such close proximity to the police.
    “Did you notice anything unusual about this guy? Some identifying mark?” Wes asked.
    “No.”
    “Did he come from the parking lot?” Wes asked.
    “No. I don’t think so.”
    “Were there any cars in the lot?” September put in.
    “I don’t know! How many times do I have to say it? I don’t know .”
    “Was he carrying the drink in a cup, or a glass, or what?” Wes asked, ignoring the outburst.
    “I don’t think you should be harassing him like this,” Verna said tightly.
    “It was like a small thermos,” Stefan said. “He just said, ‘Drink it,’ and he was the one with the weapon, so I did.”
    That’s about the first thing he’s said that really rang true, September thought.
    “Are we done now?” Stefan demanded when both September and Wes went silent.
    “Almost,” she said. “It’s just unusual, the way this went down. Most robberies at gunpoint are simply that: the doer points a gun at you and says something like, ‘Give me all your money,’ and faced with serious injury or death, most people comply. Using a stun gun on you, then forcing you to drink something and write out this message—all of that takes a lot of extra time and says something else about the crime.”
    “Maybe he’s just screwed up and likes to drug people,” Stefan muttered, his jaw working.
    “Or, maybe he wanted you unconscious for some reason. To make sure you were found after school started?” September posed, figuring Christopher Ballonni must have suffered a similar fate at the hands of whoever had tied him to the flagpole. A complete autopsy had been performed and there were traces of Rohypnol in the man’s system. She’d bet Stefan Harmak had been drugged with roofies, too.
    “He just wanted to keep me down,” Stefan said. “He didn’t want me overpowering him, so he took care of that first.”
    “It looks like he wanted to humiliate you,” September suggested.
    September might have bought Stefan’s theory more if her stepbrother was the kind of man who could physically scare someone, but he just didn’t come off that way. He undoubtedly had some strength, but there was something so Jack Sprat about him that she doubted any adult male armed with a stun gun would consider him such a threat as to drug him.
    There was definitely something else at play, and she also suspected Stefan was deliberately keeping whatever it was from her. Maybe he was embarrassed, or maybe he was just being his usual asshole self, but he knew something.
    She wanted to get a good look at the placard that had hung around Stefan’s neck when the crime techs were through with it. Since Ballonni’s placard read I MUST PAY FOR WHAT I’VE DONE , initially she and Gretchen had believed Ballonni must have been involved in a crime. They hadn’t discovered anything in the man’s past, however; Ballonni was a man who’d apparently been loved by his family and friends. The idea of suicide had been bandied about—an assisted suicide, given the zip-ties—but no one could believe Ballonni had been suicidal. He had a good job, a loving wife, a teenaged son who went hunting and fishing with him, a nice house with a low mortgage, credit card debt that was under control, and a social group with some good buddies.
    September realized she knew next to nothing about her stepbrother’s social life. “This attack seems personal.”
    “Bastard singled me out,” Stefan muttered.
    “He waited for you.” She thought that over. “I’d like to talk to someone you work with.”
    “No!” Stefan practically gasped. “They can’t know. It’s too embarrassing.”
    “It’s going to hit the news,” September pointed out.
    “Oh, God. ”