What Comes Next Read Online Free PDF

harmless and useful conceit. Terri went back into the bathroom, dashed some water on her face, and ran a brush through her hair. Despite the late hour, she wanted to look fresh, presentable, and exceptionally capable in the face of frantic panic.
    The street was dark and there were few lights on in any of the houses when Terri drove through the Rigginses’ neighborhood. The only home with any outward activity was her destination, where the porch light shone brightly and Terri could see figures moving about in the living room. A single police cruiser was parked in the driveway, but the responding officers had left their flashing lights off, so it merely looked like another car waiting for the morning suburban exodus to work or school.
    Terri pulled up in her battered six-year-old compact. She took a minute to breathe deeply before she gathered her things—a satchel with a mini—tape recorder and a bound notebook. She kept her badge attached to the strap of the satchel. Her weapon was holstered and on the seat next to her. She clamped it to the belt of her jeans, after double-checking to make certain the safety was on and no round was chambered. Another deep breath and she stepped out into the night and made her way across the lawn toward the house.
    It was a trip she had made twice before in the past eighteen months.
    She could see her breath vaporizing in the air like smoke. The temperature had fallen, but not so far that any person in New England did anything other than wrap their coat a little more tightly around their chest and maybe turn up the collar. There was clarity to the cold, not the same as the frost of winter, but a sense that lines were still drawn in the air, even with spring fitfully making its start.
    Terri wished she had stopped by her desk at the four-person detective bureau over at police headquarters and pulled her file on the Riggins family, although she doubted that there was any detail or note in those reports that she hadn’t already committed to memory. What she hated was the sensation that she was walking into a scene that was something far different from what it purported to be. An underage runaway was how she would write it up for the department records and precisely how the detective bureau would handle the case. She knew exactly what steps she would take and what the departmental guidelines and procedures were for this sort of disappearance. She even had a reasonable guess about the likely outcome of the case. But that wasn’t what was really happening, she told herself. There was some underlying reason for Jennifer’s persistence and there was probably a far worse crime lurking within the teenager’s single-minded dedication to getting away from her home. Terri just didn’t think she would ever uncover it no matter how many statements she took from the mother and the boyfriend or how hard she worked the case.
    She hated the notion that she was about to participate in a falsehood.
    On the front stoop, she hesitated before knocking on the door. She pictured her own two children at home asleep, unaware that she was not right down the hallway in her little bedroom with her own door open and her sleep light, in case she heard any strange sound. They were still young. Whatever heartache and worry they were going to produce—and there was surely to be some—was still to come.
    Jennifer was considerably farther along that road.
    Farther along a couple of roads, Terri thought. The double entendre made sense of the situation inside the house.
    Terri took a final deep breath of the cold night air, like swallowing the last drop of water from a glass. She knocked once, then pushed the door open and stepped quickly into a small hallway. She knew there was a picture of a smiling Jennifer at age nine, pink bow in carefully combed hair, framed on the wall near the stairs to the upper bedrooms. There was an endearing gap between the girl’s front teeth. It was the sort of picture beloved of parents and