When Night Falls Read Online Free PDF Page B

up. Then got rid of her.”
    Jess found herself glad Kirby had yet to arrive—the last thing her father’s protégé needed was more ammunition for his intense suspicion of William Armstrong. She already worried about his ability to investigate the case objectively.
    Of course, that could be said for half the force.
    “I’m sorry about your daughter, sir, but there’s nothing to suggest William Armstrong was involved in his own daughter’s disappearance. He wasn’t even in town at the time.”
    “A man with his money doesn’t have to be in town.”
    Jess reached for her coffee, trying to reconcile the man Manning described with the father she’d seen clutching a tattered stuffed donkey in his big hands. What must it be like, she wondered, to live with so much hatred directed at you?
    “By all accounts Armstrong dotes on his daughter. Why would he want her gone?”
    “Who knows what goes on in that man’s mind? Maybe she was cramping his style. Maybe he just got fed up with her, the fact she wasn’t daddy’s little girl anymore. Now that she’s older, she doesn’t always do what her father wants.”
    “So you think he got rid of her?” Jess asked incredulously. She’d encountered equally heinous crimes, but Carson Manning’s allegations sickened her in a way she didn’t understand.
    His eyes took on a fevered glow. “It’s called a pattern. Jessie. A pattern your father would have seen. If you can’t see it, I’ll find someone who will.”
    * * *
    Liam slammed his fist against hard leather. The punching bag swooshed back, swung forward for another jab. He pounded the abused surface, sending the hundred-pound mass of high-impact foam swaying violently. Right then left, right then left. Over and over, harder each time.
    The exertion sent jolts of satisfaction spearing through him.
    Sweat poured down his face, ran down his chest. He blinked it from his eyes but kept right on punching. The impact cleared his focus, reinforcing the fact he was awake and not living in some nightmare.
    Damn, but he wished that seeing his daughter’s smile again was as simple as waking up.
    On a low oath he stepped back and kicked up his right leg, the bottom of his foot slamming into the heavy bag. His trainer would curse him for not bothering with shoes, but Liam wasn’t seeking comfort. He needed to take the edge off before he trusted himself around others.
    Heaving in another breath, he kept fighting.
    Liam was a man accustomed to making things happen. If an obstacle blocked his path, he moved it. Sometimes negotiation worked. On those rare occasions when it didn’t, he employed more severe tactics. Whatever it took to produce the desired outcome.
    “Damn it,” he said, then landed another vicious blow to the innocent punching bag. Rather than leather, he envisioned the person responsible for taking his daughter.
    “Oh, Liam, honey, don’t hurt yourself.”
    The feathery voice took him by surprise. He stepped back from the swinging bag and turned to find Marlena Dane posed in the training-room doorway. As always, she was dressed to the nines, her bottle-blond hair and bright blue suit a stark contrast to his mood. His housekeeper must have let her in.
    “What are you doing here?”
    Her smile was tentative. “How can you even ask me that?”
    “Easily.” He grabbed a white towel and scrubbed it over his face. Other than Emily, the only person he cared to see was the enigmatic detective who’d promised to find his daughter. Certainly not his former lover.
    The click of stiletto heels against ceramic tile warned of her approach. He slung back the towel and draped it around his shoulders. “This isn’t a good time, Marlena.”
    “There never is with you, William. When are you going to admit you’re not indestructible and let someone help?”
    “Unless you know where to find Emmie, there’s nothing you can do.”
    Marlena made a breathy clucking noise and stopped mere inches from him. “I suppose that’s