Proof of Life. Laura Scott
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“I’ll think about it.”
Quinn looked as if he wanted to argue, but instead he turned toward the officers. “Anything else?”
“Ms. Dawson might want to find a friend to stay with for a while,” Officer Jones said. “Being here alone is asking for trouble.”
Friends? She almost laughed. The only real friend she had was Megan O’Ryan, and she’d recently moved to Crystal Lake, Wisconsin. Megan had just gotten married, and after everything her friend had been through, Shanna couldn’t bring herself to dump her own troubles on Megan’s shoulders. Megan had barely survived being strangled by a serial killer. Worse, the killer was someone they knew. Raoul Lee was a brilliant scientist. Now he’d spend the rest of his life in jail. The cops waited expectantly, so she nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”
The officers left, promising to be in touch if they found anything.
“I’ll follow you to work.” Quinn’s tone didn’t leave room for discussion.
His persistence was starting to annoy her. But rather than arguing, she gathered her work stuff together, including her shoulder holster. She sensed Quinn’s frustration as he stood watching her. Before she could get out the door, her cell phone rang.
She recognized Alan’s number from the lab. Setting her laptop case on the kitchen table, she answered the phone. “Do you have something for me, Al?”
“Yeah, uh, we got a hit on one of the fingerprints found at your college frat house crime scene.”
A hit on the fingerprints was good news. “Who is it?” she asked eagerly, glancing at Quinn. An identity would get them one step closer to finding the killer.
“Are you on your way here? Because I think we should talk in person.” He cleared his throat loudly. “The news is going to be a bit of a shock.”
His tap-dancing around the issue only irritated her. “Just tell me.”
There was a pause. “Shanna, we have a set of fingerprints matching a child who’s been missing for fourteen years.”
A child? Missing for fourteen years? No. Oh, no. Her stomach twisted, and little red dots swam in her vision. She grabbed the edge of the kitchen table and pushed the word through her tight throat. “Who?”
“Your sister. Skylar Dawson.”
THREE
Shanna blinked, staring up at Quinn’s anxious face looming over her. The kitchen floor was hard and unyielding beneath her back. Disoriented, she winced and lifted her head. “What happened?”
“You fainted.” Quinn’s gruff tone betrayed his concern.
“Fainted?” Embarrassed, she pushed up onto her elbows, her head throbbing. She must have hit her head on the floor.
“Let me help you up.” Quinn put his arm around her shoulders, supporting her weight as she struggled to her feet. Her knees still felt wobbly, so she sat at the kitchen table.
“What happened?” Quinn asked, picking up her cell phone from where it must have skittered across the floor. “One minute you were saying something about the fingerprint results from the crime scene, and the next you collapsed onto the floor.”
In a rush it all came flooding back.
Skylar. The pressure in her chest built to the point she could barely breathe. Her fault. It was her fault her little sister had been kidnapped fourteen years ago. Her fault that her parents had divorced, destroying what was left of their family.
“Shanna, breathe,” Quinn commanded in a sharp tone.
Feeling dizzy again, she obeyed, taking a deep breath before she did something stupid, like fainting for a second time. After a few minutes the room stopped spinning.
Forcing herself to meet his questioning gaze, she knew she couldn’t lie to him. Not now. Not about this. “The prints at the scene of Brady’s death match those of my sister, Skylar.”
Quinn frowned, perplexed. “Okay. Does your sister go to Carlyle University, too?”
“I don’t know.” She licked her dry lips. “Skylar was kidnapped when she was only five years old. Her case has remained unsolved. I haven’t seen her in fourteen years. No one has.”
Quinn’s jaw dropped, and he sank into the chair beside her. “You’re kidding.”
“No. I’m not.” The memory burned with a clarity that belied the passing years.
On Skylar’s first day of kindergarten, her mother had insisted Shanna take her sister all the way inside the elementary school to meet the kindergarten teacher. She was older by five years, so Shanna had agreed. As they’d approached the school, she’d discovered a bunch of her friends were playing kickball on the older kid’s section of the playground, farthest from the building.
“Shanna!” Toby Meyers, the boy she secretly liked, had waved and shouted to her from the game. “Hurry up, we’re losing. We need you on our team.”
Thrilled that he’d noticed her, and that he’d wanted her on his team, she’d dropped Skylar’s hand. “Just go inside the building there, Skylar, okay? You’ll see Mrs. Anderson, the kindergarten teacher, in the first classroom.”
“But Shanna,” Skylar protested, hanging back.
“Just go!” Impatiently, Shanna had given Skylar a little push and then turned away, rushing over to join the kickball game already in progress. Toby made room for her in the lineup to kick next.
She’d taken her turn, kicking the ball with all her strength, sending it sailing over the heads of all the kids. With Toby cheering her on, she’d rounded the bases, making it all the way home to score.
They hadn’t won the game—the bell had rung and they’d had to quit—but Toby’s cheering had echoed in her head for the next hour. Until the school principal, Mrs. Haggerty, had tapped her on the shoulder, taking her out of her fourth-grade class to the office.
“Shanna, when did you last see your sister?”
Skylar? Guiltily, Shanna realized she hadn’t even thought about her sister since hurrying off to the kickball game. “This morning, when I walked her to school.”
“Did you take her inside to see the teacher?”
Numbly, Shanna shook her head no.
“She’s not in the kindergarten class.” Mrs. Haggerty looked extremely worried. “Your mother is on her way here. I think we’d better search every classroom. Maybe Skylar got lost and is hiding somewhere.”
Shanna felt sick, knowing her mother would be so angry that she hadn’t taken Skylar all the way inside the classroom as she’d been told to do. Mrs. Haggarty had hurried away to begin searching for her sister, but she’d just sat in the principal’s office, afraid to do anything, hoping and praying they’d find Skylar hiding as they thought.
But her little sister hadn’t been hiding. Nobody had seen Skylar anywhere around the school. Shanna had been the last person to see her sister alive and well.
Now she was gone. And it was all her fault.
“Here, drink this.” Quinn thrust a glass in her hands.
Blinking at him, she willed the guilt-laden memories away. She took the glass and drank, reveling in the cool water soothing her throat. “Thanks. I’m fine.”
“No!” Quinn’s tone was sharp. “You’re not fine. You’re pale, as if you’re going to faint again.”
“I won’t,” she protested. She refused to faint again; once was certainly bad enough. She needed to pull herself together. The reality of the situation finally sank into her brain. Her sister’s prints were found at the scene. After fourteen years of not knowing anything, those