The Widow's Secret Read Online Free PDF

You’ll feel better for it, I promise.” The kindness in his voice made her eyes sting.
    â€œI doubt it,” she whispered.
    It was done. Whatever happened to her no longer mattered. Exposure, shame, condemnation—prison. Nothing mattered but that she had finally gathered the strength to do the right thing, for someone other than herself. No longer could she control her quaking limbs. Fumbling, she opened the doors to the sheet-music cabinet, tugged out the bottom drawer, her fingersscooping up the watch box. Her steps leaden, she walked back across the room to Operative MacKenzie and thrust out her hand.
    â€œHere. This is what I found.” She thrust the object into his hands. “Inside the box there is a ten-dollar bill wrapped around a coin. The bill is obviously counterfeit. I don’t know about the coin.”
    As she talked, he opened the box, removed the bill and coin. “I gave him this case,” Micah said. “He was to hide inside it the evidence he promised to bring me. Something, or someone, made him bolt into Clocks & Watches. Mrs. Tremayne, you’re not going to swoon at my feet, are you?”
    â€œOf course not!” She hoped.
    â€œHmm.” His gaze shifted to the gold coin, and the ten-dollar bill, and Jocelyn watched, fascinated, while he examined them with narrowed eyes and deft fingers. “Excellent workmanship, but someone mishandled the printing on this bill, which indicates an entire set was likely bungled. Coin’s probably bogus, as well…but this just might be the break we’ve been looking for.” Excitement sparked in the words.
    Jocelyn sank back down onto the sofa and allowed herself a single shuddering breath.
    Operative MacKenzie’s head lifted. “You all right?” She nodded but didn’t trust herself to speak yet; his gaze turned speculative. “In my business, I’ve learned how to distinguish a counterfeit bill from the real one. I’ve also learned the same about people. Sometimes it’s more difficult to discern the counterfeit from the genuine, particularly when you think you know someone. Or, in your case, when you think you knew someone.”
    Dumbfounded, Jocelyn lifted her hand to her throat, her eyes burning as she searched Operative MacKenzie’s face. “Earlier…you said ‘ten years.’ We’ve met before, haven’t we?” she asked hoarsely. “Before Clocks & Watches?”
    â€œYes. We have.” He hesitated, clasped his hands behind his back and contemplated the floor for a tension-spiked second. “It was at a wedding. Yours, to Chadwick Bingham. You were leaning against a marble column, and you’d removed your shoes because they were pinching your toes.”
    â€œYou’re that young man? You said Chadwick told you the freckles gave my face character. No wonder I—” Roaring filled her ears, and a vortex sucked her inside its black maw. “Chadwick never said that. My freckles embarrassed him. And I…I wished—”
    â€œGently, there.”
    A hard arm wrapped around her shoulder, startling her so badly she jerked. “Whoa. Relax, Mrs. Tremayne. Let’s lean you over a bit, hmm? I’m holding you up so you don’t topple onto the carpet. As soon as I can, I’ll fetch Katya. All right?”
    The words washed over her, lapping at the fringes of the whirling vortex. His warmth and his strength surrounded her. If only she could trust him, if only she could lean against him, draw from his strength, savor the feel of his protective embrace. Soak up his kindness.
    Kindness, she had learned through painful experience, usually covered a shark-infested sea, boiling with ugly motives.
    She would never trust a man again.

Chapter Four
    M icah struggled to remember that he was a federal operative, that the woman he held was not the blushing bride he’d met one evening a decade earlier, but a witness