Gathering Dark Candice Fox (e reader TXT) 📖

had finished telling her story about Dayly Lawlor and the amateur investigation she had launched with Dayly’s mother. She just stood there, her hand on the gun resting on the counter between them.

“We’re not completely out of our depth,” Blair went on. She cleared her throat, winced in the stinging silence. “We’ve found some good leads, I think. But we’re getting to the stage where someone in law enforcement on our side would be really helpful. Invaluable, actually.”

“This friend of yours, Sneak,” Jessica said. “I understand her coming to you to question you. You were the last person to see her daughter alive. But why is she hanging around? You’re not a private investigator. You’re a doctor.”

“Not anymore,” Blair said. “They canceled my medical license.”

“Thank Christ,” Jessica said. “Why doesn’t she just go to the police?”

“She may be…” Blair gave a big sigh, paused for a long time to weigh her options. “She may be wanted.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“She’s not sure.”

“Oh, great.” Jessica nodded. “That’s just great.”

“Dayly’s disappearance is with the police. That much became clear when I went to inquire about it myself. I was handled … aggressively.”

“I’d probably have handled you aggressively, too, if it was me,” Jessica snapped. “You’re a killer. Not just that, you’re a parolee hanging out with a known criminal. How the fuck are you not behind bars again right now?”

“I’ve been lucky,” Blair said. “But the aggression wasn’t related to that. The detective on the case is named Al Tasik. Do you know him?”

“Maybe.”

“He treated me as if I was fishing around in something that was off-limits.” She shifted uncomfortably and looked out at the pool. “And he’s since made a play at getting me thrown back in jail.”

“Made a play?” Jessica asked. “You mean, did his job?”

Blair folded her arms, stared at the carpet, seemed to consider something. Jessica watched, the heat burning in her cheeks, her neck. The heat that told her something was wrong here. That she was fighting for the wrong side.

“I’m asking you not to follow the same course of action,” Blair said. “As a kindness.”

“You can ask all you want.”

“Maybe it was a mistake to come here,” Blair sighed.

“You think so?”

“I wouldn’t have done it if I wasn’t desperate. Believe me, you’re the last person in the world I’d want to see again after what happened.”

Jessica’s hand tightened on the gun.

“But I’m willing to set aside our history and work with you on this,” Blair said carefully. “Sneak is my friend, and I believe her daughter is in real danger. And maybe you were just doing your job the best way you knew how when you put me away. You were wrong about me, of course. I didn’t kill Adrian Orlov because I was paranoid or angry. I did it because I had no choice. I believed he was going to kill his girlfriend right there in front of me, and as a doctor I was trained to protect life. You didn’t believe me, but everybody makes mist—”

Jessica shook her head. “There was no fucking mistake, Harbour.”

“But like I said”—Blair put a hand up—“I’m not here about that. I came because Dayly Lawlor put a gun in my face, and that gun wasn’t as scary to me as the look in her eyes. She looked like a hunted animal.”

Jessica watched her visitor across the wild, hot, empty space between them, the burning knowledge of what they had once been to each other. Hunter and hunted. When Blair met Jessica’s gaze, it was all Jessica could do not to look away.

“Will you at least see what’s going on at your end?” Blair asked. “Where the investigation stands and why Al Tasik—”

“I don’t know what I’ll do,” Jessica said. “Right now my only plans are to watch you get in your car and drive the hell away from here.”

She walked out of the kitchen. Blair followed her to the front door. There was some kind of drug-dealer special parked in front of the house. Jessica marveled at it, the glimmering chrome rims and hood ornament. She could only imagine what stories might be cooked up at the station the next day if a patrol drive-by spotted the car parked next to hers out front. Blair Harbour was hardly out the door when she slammed it shut, twisting the deadlock closed.

Three seconds.

She watched helplessly as her own hand twisted the lock back again. With a will that was not her own she wrenched open the door. Blair paused on the stoop.

“The Orlov bathroom,” she said. “First floor or second floor?”

Blair looked back at her, her features a mixture of confusion and fear.

“What?”

“You said you saw Orlov and his girlfriend fighting in the bathroom that night,” Jessica said. “You saw them from your kitchen window. Was the bathroom on the first or second floor?”

Blair searched her memory, her eyes roving the ground at her feet. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know? It’s a simple question.”

“It’s been ten years. It was a horrible night. I’ve tried not to think about it.”

Jessica smirked, was surprised by the nastiness of the sound. “You ever go into the Orlov house before that night?”

“No,” Blair said.

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

“So how do you remember a thing like that, and not what floor the bathroom was on?”

“Why are you asking me this?” Blair asked. Jessica opened her mouth to answer, but whatever had been controlling her had fled. She shut the door and locked it again.

Jessica watched through the glass panels beside the door as the killer she had once arrested walked down the driveway toward her car.

BLAIR

I hadn’t dreamed of the murder in many years. The dreams had always come unexpectedly, surprise attacks that arrived in the middle of a good week, when my mind was furthest from the night filled with blue lights and red blood. Sometimes I was pregnant, the way I actually had been when I killed Adrian Orlov, and sometimes Jamie was a small child tucked into a crib in the