Strawberry Murder: A Frosted Love Cozy Mystery - Book 13 (Frosted Love Cozy Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF Page B

Frank Capetti, and she wasn’t even going to think twice about
leaving. Picking up her bags, and sliding her feet into sandals, she headed for
the door, where Frank stood waiting for her, with a smart phone in his hand.
    “The
house is a smart house,” he said, his eyes cold. “I control all of the locks,
doors and windows from this phone. Like I said before, you’re not going
anywhere,” he stepped toward her as her bags hit the floor with a thud.
     

Chapter 11
    Chas
Beckett was more worried and more puzzled than ever. He’d done some
investigating and found out that Frank Capetti had quite a dark past. His
parents had died of undetermined causes when he was young, so he spent the bulk
of his childhood in various orphanages and foster homes, bouncing around from
home to home like a human ping-pong ball and getting in trouble wherever he
went. He’d done jail time for everything from drugs to burglary, but perhaps
the most alarming thing was that he’d also been arrested multiple times for
domestic violence. Some of his victims had been so badly abused that they’d
ended up in the hospital.
    It
was a pretty good assumption that Echo was most likely with him, since they’d
disappeared at the same time, and Missy might also be in his clutches, having
disappeared a day later. The thing that didn’t add up was Brad’s murder.
Jealousy had been established as Capetti’s motive for beating up the women in
his life, but he’d never killed anyone and never so much as assaulted a man,
choosing to bruise and bully the women who loved him instead.
    Capetti
hadn’t been lying about writing text books, that actually is what he did for a
living, but another disturbing fact that Chas had unearthed about the unsavory
character was that the current focus of his work was in psychology, sociology and
criminal behavior. So, not only did Capetti already have the tendency to
inflict physical harm upon others, he most likely was also highly educated in
how to manipulate others emotionally in order to build trust so that they’d
willingly but unwittingly put themselves in harm’s way at his hand.
    Bitsy
had curled up around the detective’s feet as he sat in his home office staring
at reports and lab work so long that the words on the page blurred, and Toffee
came over and laid her head in his lap, gazing up at him with warm, chocolatey
eyes.
    “I
know girl, I miss her too,” he said, stroking the golden’s silky ears. “I’ll
bring her back, I promise.”
     

Chapter 12
    Missy
was groggy and so ridiculously thirsty. She had torturous dreams of crawling
through the desert, her hands raw from desert scrub and her throat and eyes
blistered by sand, waking to find that, although the source was different, the
result was the same. Her thoughts had cleared to a degree that she could make
the decision that something had to give. She felt her life ebbing away from her
and knew that she couldn’t continue putting up with these conditions and expect
to live. Listening for any sound that would indicate that someone was about,
she heard nothing and decided that it was now or never – she had to try to free
herself, or die trying.
    She
felt the same type of cushion on which she was lying, rise up beside her to her
right, which meant that if she truly were on a couch, there should be an edge
to her left. Using what meager strength she had, she scooted her body to the
left, inch by inch, until she felt an edge. Her limbs tingled with misuse, but
she continued scooting over until she could swing her legs over and rest them
on the floor. The effort made her head swim and she stayed very still,
recovering for a bit before attempting to sit up.
    Gathering
her strength for what seemed like a Herculean task, Missy struggled and
strained and finally sat upright, panting with exertion. Dismayed that she
couldn’t see, not even knowing whether it was day or night, she was determined
to find her way out of her current circumstances. Scooting her