Shattered Lives Read Online Free PDF

how much conversation took place nonverbally.
    Billy stayed with Jeremy and Randy on weekends and for long stretches during the summer, including some holidays, and it infuriated Monica, whereas Robert saw it as only natural, even though it had saddened him.
                  One early September afternoon, Billy had come home from school and found Robert lying in the upstairs hallway clutching two chocolate chip cookies, dead from a massive heart attack.
    There was a legal battle. 
    Robert’s will gave most of his money to Billy, with Jeremy the executor of a trust set up by a huge life insurance policy.  Monica had a lawyer who demanded not only the money, but also that Billy live with her because she was the original adoptive mother.  Jeremy had a very high priced lawyer bought and paid for by his best friend, Jeff Limbach, an international bestselling author.  No way could Jeremy have afforded the meetings, the briefs, the- crap - as he put it, without Jeff’s help. 
    Billy refused to speak to her or to her lawyer, but it was his threat to run away any and every chance he could that eventually wore Monica down.  So, she gave up and moved out of state, and Billy hadn’t had any contact with her since, even though Jeremy had encouraged him to.  Eventually, Jeremy had given up too.
    So, Jeremy had a set of twins, each going by different last names: Randy Evans, who was eventually adopted by Jeremy, and Billy Schroeder.  He was also adopted by Jeremy, but out of respect for his original adoptive father, he had kept his original last name.  It was confusing to outsiders, but perfectly normal to those who were close to the twins.
    And now there was George.
    Two days previous, FBI agent Pete Kelliher, a guy Jeremy had never met, called and asked to meet him.  Being curious, Jeremy agreed.  Kelliher brought George in tow and asked Jeremy to watch over him while he and the members on his team investigated a human trafficking ring across half of the United States.  Pete had no idea when George would go home, and now it seemed that he might not ever go home except to tie up loose ends.
    The problem was that George didn’t have a home to go home to.  He had witnessed a murder- an execution, really- of a boy his own age while tending his family’s sheep on the Navajo reservation in Northeast Arizona.  He stepped forward as a witness, and in retaliation, his grandparents, his mother, his sister and two brothers were murdered and his house set on fire.  The only reason George wasn’t murdered was because, at the request of Kelliher and the FBI, he was in Wisconsin at a scene of yet another child murder, identifying two perpetrators- found dead alongside the boy. 
    And to make it all the more interesting- and gruesome- on the night of the sieges in Chicago, Kansas City and Long Beach, George had fought and killed a man sent to kill him and Jeremy and the twins.  The man died on the side of the house among the Tea Roses and Chrysanthemums.  Had that man made his way into the house undetected, Jeremy, the twins and George would most certainly be dead.
    George had never really known his father, and the only living relative he had was a twenty-six year old single cousin who was a Navajo Tribal Policeman living in a trailer by a creek bed that was more dry than wet.
                  What worried Jeremy, what kept him awake at night and the puzzle he prayed about and tried to solve early each morning before the boys awoke, was how he was going to afford the twins and a third fourteen-year old boy, on a high school counselor’s salary.  George hadn’t come with anything other than the clothes on his back, the Addidas shoes on his feet and a small, beat up duffle bag that contained his cowboy boots and moccasins, and a small plastic Target sack that included a toothbrush, toothpaste and deodorant, socks, two t-shirts and three pair of boxers purchased by Kelliher when he had dropped the boy off.