Nowhere Safe Read Online Free PDF Page B

Stefan raked his fingers through his hair and Verna looked stricken.
    “Who do you hang out with at the school? Maybe I can start with them,” September suggested.
    “Nobody. They’re all married, old women.” Stefan glared at her as if it were her fault. “It’s just a job.”
    “I’ll give Amy Lazenby a call,” September said. She’d met the principal of Twin Oaks earlier in the fall.
    “You know her?” Stefan burst out, as if he couldn’t bear the thought. “Don’t talk to her. She’s a bitch.”
    September pointed out, “She’s going to hear about this, so I can give her a heads-up before it hits the news.”
    “The news . . .” Stefan closed his eyes.
    “It happened on school grounds,” September said patiently. Stefan acted like the whole incident could just be swept under the rug, but that wasn’t how these things worked.
    Wes asked him, “Who should we talk to?”
    “I don’t know. No one.” His chin dropped to his chest as if he were collapsing.
    “Aren’t you people the ones who figure that out?” Verna demanded, looking Wes over.
    There wasn’t much more they were going to get out of him now, September determined, so she said, “All right, Stefan. I’ll give you a call later.”
    She and Wes left the hospital together and as they walked to the parking lot outside Emergency, she asked him, “So, how do you like my stepfamily?”
    “Love ’em. Lucky you.”
    September smiled faintly. “You haven’t met Rosamund yet.”
    “Do I want to know Rosamund?” Wes asked.
    “Doubtful. She took Verna’s place as my current stepmother. She’s younger than I am, and she’s pregnant, due in January. You know the whole deal with my family and the names.”
    “You’re all months.”
    “My father’s idea,” September said. “My oldest brother’s March, then my sister, July, then May, then Auggie and me. We do have a half brother who escaped the craziness, and although Rosamund thinks she’s going to name her little girl Gilda, we’re all betting on January.”
    “I thought my family had its issues,” he observed, “but you Raffertys beat us all to hell.”
    “We beat everybody,” September said on a sigh as she reached her silver Honda Pilot. “You know the fire at my father’s house—the one that was done with gasoline and a match?”
    “Have you got a suspect?” he asked with sudden interest.
    “No, no. Not really. My father and half brother saw someone running away but they couldn’t see who it was. My sister July wants to believe it was Stefan.”
    Wes had been peeling off toward his Range Rover, but now he stopped short. “Why?”
    “Why does she think that? Because she doesn’t like him. Or, why would he do it?”
    “Why would he do it?”
    September shook her head. “Why did someone make him write I WANT WHAT I CAN’T HAVE under the threat of being Tased by a stun gun, drug him, and tie him half naked to a pole outside the school where he worked?”
    Wes shook his head slowly, then mused, “What does he want that he can’t have?”
    “What did Christopher Ballonni, professed all around great guy, do that someone made him write I MUST PAY FOR WHAT I’VE DONE ?”
    “I was waiting for you to tell Harmak about Ballonni,” Wes said.
    “Not until I talk to D’Annibal. There’s a connection. Stefan’s story parallels Ballonni’s too closely, but I didn’t feel like letting that out yet.”
    “It’ll be on the news. There are leaks everywhere, and the Ballonni story was big.”
    “I’m going to talk to D’Annibal today,” September assured him.
    Wes nodded and headed toward his car while September climbed carefully into her SUV. She didn’t relish talking to her lieutenant; she knew he would probably take her off the case and she was trying to come up with some excuse to stay on it.
    Her cell phone rang and she pulled it out of her messenger bag and read the caller ID. Sandler, her partner. Ex-partner, actually, until she was