House of Secrets. Ramona Richards
her entire family. June had kept track of her on the internet, but neither she nor April had seen their sister since.
As June watched the coroner zip the body bag closed, she shook off one last memory: JR, three years ago, collapsed on the floor beside his pulpit, dead before he’d hit the floor from a heart attack so massive the doctors doubted he’d felt anything.
June forced herself to come back to the present. She looked around the room. Deputy Gage was finishing last-minute tasks with the crime-scene kit, pulling fingerprints from the kitchen table and labeling the last of the blood samples.
Standing in the hallway door, Ray and Daniel conferred over diagrams of the crime scene as the coroner and one of the deputies loaded Pastor David’s body on the gurney and wheeled him out. Outside, dozens of faces peered intently, dodging back and forth, trying to get the best view through the door.
The parsonage, like the church itself, sat in the middle of one of White Hills’ oldest and most established residential sections. One reason the Victorian had been the house of choice to replace the crumbling cottage where she and JR had first lived in this small town was its proximity to the church. It was literally next door, surrounded by the homes of potential members.
Members who now peered inside, desperate for more information. Tears coated the faces of most of the women and some of the men as the news about David spread. They held each other, some scared and anxious, others angry. They stared at her through the open door, sitting there in her white suit.
Guilty. They thought she was guilty.
June closed her eyes, memories again flashing through her mind. Other times that people stared and pointed. As JR was carried from the sanctuary. As her mother’s body had been removed from their house.
The day she had been arrested.
June had traded the abuse of home for the violence of the streets. She’d lived in abandoned boxes or sometimes at missions, working hard-labor jobs. As a kid, she’d discovered she was good with computers, so she tried to practice her gift in libraries and friends’ apartments whenever she could crash with someone, hoping it might help her get a job and get off the street somehow. And it did—in a way. An underground hacker discovered her talents, giving her a place to sleep while recruiting her to wreak mischief on corporations and local governments. She could defeat almost any firewall, break through almost any security system. And she’d loved it. Finally good at something, finally praised for her work, June took pride in tackling what she saw as the greatest puzzle-solving game ever.
When the police arrested her for computer crimes, June’s world crashed. A year later, she was eighteen, on parole and back on the streets, broke and hopeless, ready to get back to hacking. Until the night she wandered into one of Jackie Rhea “JR” Eaton’s mobile soup kitchens.
“June?”
She blinked up at Ray as if coming out of a dark dream.
“Are you okay?”
June pointed at her temple. “Headache.”
Ray smiled wryly. “Yeah. No doubt.”
The wound on his head had begun to bleed again, and June resisted the urge to reach toward it, to tend to him. “You ever going to the doctor with that? Seriously. You look awful.” The coroner had cleaned his injury with a first-aid kit, putting on a temporary bandage, but dried blood still streaked his neck and matted his dark brown, closely cropped hair. Fresh blood discolored the bandage and tape.
“Thanks. You don’t look much better yourself.”
“No doubt,” she replied, using one of Ray’s favorite expressions. But she knew the truth as well. She’d skidded when she’d fallen and slipped twice trying to get up. Even with her washed hands and white suit, she had David’s blood in her hair, which had to be topsy-turvy by now. And half of her makeup had shifted dramatically from its original location on her face.
“We still need to test your hair.”
June’s eyes widened in confusion. “I beg your pardon?”
“The blood. David fought back. Not a lot and not for long, but he could have injured one of his attackers. There may be blood from—”
“One of his attackers?”
Ray hesitated, then nodded. “You saw the footprints on the porch. So we think there were at least two. One went out the back, one through the tunnel. And maybe one of them left his blood here, too.”
June understood where he was going. “And I might have landed in it as well.”
“Another reason I didn’t want you to wash your hands.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s done. But I don’t want to miss another chance. Can you ask April to pick up a change of clothes from your house and meet us at NorthCrest Medical?”
“Why do I need to go to NorthCrest?”
Ray shifted to stand squarely over both feet, then began counting off his reasoning. “A. Because you’re covered in blood, possibly from more than one person. I want you on their records if something…untoward shows up in the blood work.”
“You mean HIV.”
“And hepatitis C. It’s a precaution.”
“I don’t have any open—”
“B. Once the adrenaline subsides, you may find that you’re really hurt somewhere. If you fell like you described, you hit pretty hard.”
“Okay.”
“And C. I’m not letting you out of my sight again until I get you to the station for a complete statement and someone is assigned to watch your house tonight.”
June sat a bit straighter. “Watch my house? You think I’m in danger?”
Ray hesitated. “Depends on whether they believe you saw them leave.”
“But I didn’t—”
“You interrupted the search of the study. They have no idea what you saw. And you’re still my material witness. Don’t argue.”
She stood up, stepping closer and tilting her head back to look up at his face. “What about my car? It has a tricky transmission.”
“Everyone in the county knows your car has a tricky transmission. We’ll leave it here for now. I’ll send it home later with a guy who’s good with a manual.”
“You have to let it warm up at least ten minutes. Then make sure you put it in First before shifting to Reverse or it won’t go anywhere. It has that 435-horsepower, big-block engine. You don’t do it right, you’ll leave half its innards sitting in the road.”
“You should have that fixed.”
“Yeah, but then it wouldn’t be June’s emerald-green 1968 Corvette with the tricky transmission.”
“Notoriety isn’t always a good thing.”
“No such thing as bad publicity.”
“Nothing good about being stranded on the side of the road.”
“Not a bad way to meet new folks in a county like this.”
“June.” He took a step closer until they were toe to toe.
“What?”
“Get it fixed.”
“So you won’t worry about me?”
Ray’s mouth tightened to a thin line, but his eyes glistened a bit. June wasn’t sure if he was going to laugh or yell.
He yelled. But he never took his eyes off hers. “Rivers!”
Daniel came to his side and Ray stepped back from June. “Please call your wife and ask her to bring a change of clothes for June to NorthCrest. We’ll be