When Night Falls Read Online Free PDF

Not even she had escaped Emily’s fashion fetish. The black dog wore a light brown bandanna with orange and red maple leaves embroidered on it. Emmie had selected the fall-themed scarf from her collection just a few nights before.
    The sight of it tied around Molly’s neck, the memory of his daughter securing the cloth there, sliced at Liam like a knife to the heart. Needing to do something, anything to help find his daughter, Liam crossed to his desk and grabbed the phone.
    “I’m all over it,” Vega St. Clair said moments later. The private investigator was one of the most renowned in the southwest. “We’ll find the son of a bitch who took your daughter. We’ll get her back.”
    The first few rays of optimism pushed through Liam. “There’s one more thing, someone else I need you to look into.”
    “Shoot.”
    “Detective Jessica Clark. Daughter of former chief Wallace Clark.” Liam picked up a picture of Emily and Molly, remembering how the detective had studied it just a few minutes before. There’d been something curious in her heavy-lidded, intelligent eyes, a sliver of sorrow, a shadow of regret. A flash of familiarity.
    She was the key. Any hope of the cops finding his daughter rested squarely on Detective Jessica Clark’s shoulders.
    “I want to know how she did in the academy, how fast she made detective, what her track record is. I want to know what makes her tick, what makes her hurt.”
    St. Clair laughed. “Looking for a little insurance?”
    Liam appreciated minds that worked as fast, as strategically, as his. “A puzzle can’t be put together until all the pieces are identified.”
    And if he wasn’t careful, the beauty with the badge could easily shift from being a piece of the solution to the heart of the problem.

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    Chapter 3
    « ^ »
    ” T hat man belongs behind bars,” Carson Manning barked. “Isn’t it obvious he’s a menace to society?”
    Jess put down the heavy-duty coffee she’d picked up on the way to the station. Operating on less than an hour’s sleep, she held her frustration with Emily’s grandfather in check. She’d known the quick-tempered man all her life, still remembered those brisk fall weekends when he and her father had taken off in search of deer. She’d hated it then, hated the memory now.
    The former state congressman had been waiting when she arrived ten minutes earlier. They sat in one of the small interviewing rooms while she attempted to keep him calm enough to take his statement. “Mr. Manning—”
    “I warned Judge Donovan that man had no business raising a daughter. I told your father something like this would happen.”
    She frowned. Loss and death changed people, she knew. Twisted them. Turned them inside out. Carson Manning hadn’t been an easy man to begin with. “Something like what?”
    The older man surged out of the small wooden chair like an oil well gushing out of control. “I tried to get custody of Emily. After what that bastard did to my Heather—”
    “He was never charged with a crime,” Jess reminded, standing. There hadn’t even been a body, just a mountain of circumstantial evidence—brand-new clothes still in the closet, suitcases under the bed, a hair appointment for the following day, never kept. Money in the bank, never withdrawn. Credit cards never used again. A history of loud arguments.
    A baby left alone, hungry and crying.
    “That doesn’t mean he isn’t keeping secrets, Jessie, only that he’s smarter than the cops are.”
    Smarter than a lot of people, Jess knew, based on the money he’d made writing and selling code for Internet companies. He’d amassed a fortune seemingly overnight, much to the chagrin of her father and Carson Manning.
    “Heather was a happy, loving girl,” he went on. “A bit of a free spirit, but with a good heart. We always thought she’d marry the boy next door. Heather went to college and forgot all about poor Kale the second she met Armstrong. He used her. Knocked her