Read Bounty (Walk the Right Road) for Free Online

been ogling you the way you were ogling him, that guy would probably get his face slapped.”
    Diane’s jaw slackened, and she felt her face burn again. “Sam, I wasn’t eyeing him up.”
    “Yes, you were.”
    He was right, but she sure as hell didn’t want to admit it. “I’m just rattled. Did you notice the way he understood that girl?”
    “Yeah, that was just weird,” Sam said as he parked in her driveway, behind her SUV.
    “Well, no, it’s not weird. He’s good, really good. He’s done his homework, and he was right about taking the personal out of it.” Diane stared out the front windshield at her neat and tidy two-story house.
    “So what are you going to do?” Sam said as he rested his hand on the steering wheel.
    “I’m going to do my job: find out what happened, who killed her. I’m going to find out her story.”

Chapter 6
    Diane dropped the damp yellow sponge in the double sink of her spotless kitchen. The white cupboards and the open island in the center of the kitchen shone against the stainless steel fridge and propane stove. The peach walls and cream wainscoting appeared tired to her. Maybe she could paint again, redo her kitchen. How about a deep green, something dark, different? Yes, she definitely needed a change. Maybe she could scrub the windows that overlooked her large backyard and the old fir trees that dotted the perimeter backing onto the state park. It was breathtaking, and it should have been giving her a peaceful, easy feeling, except she couldn’t stop pacing or shake the agitation winding up her gut so tight that she ached. If she stopped, her head would keep on going a million miles a minute, dragging her back to thoughts she didn’t want to think. No, she needed to do something to focus, to get her head back in the game.
    Her arm muscles burned as she leaned on the counter. She’d scrubbed every room, the floors, the sinks, until there wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere. But those flashes of memory kept coming from a home she prayed to forget. Along with them came all the hurt she’d swallowed over and over as a child. No one had known who she was inside, as she’d had no voice. It was the same for this girl, murdered and left on a highway less than ten miles from where Diane lived. Her past was being laid to rest on her doorstep, and she didn’t like it one bit.
    Diane snatched up her holstered gun and clipped it to the waistband of her jeans. She slid open the door and stepped out onto her open deck, spotting a downed tree at the edge of her property line. She rummaged through the blue recycling box and pulled out three cans, striding across the damp grass and setting each one on the rotted old log. The light from the sun flickered through the trees, and she glanced up at a sky now dotted with clouds, thick and wooly with red and orange at the edges. If this had been any other evening, she’d have just sat and watched the colors, imagining the story in the sky. But not tonight. There were times she needed to take action, to do something until her head stopped spinning and she physically couldn’t do one more thing. Her house was about as clean as it could get.
    She flicked the strap on her holster and stood at the edge of the deck before removing her Glock and eyeing up the first tin can. Her finger rested on the trigger, her other hand cupped underneath as she took her stance. She sucked in a deep breath and pulled the trigger. The bullet took out the tin can with a thunk, scattering it in the bushes. She lined up for the next two and fired another shot; the next tin can flew, and she got a bead on the next and fired again. From deep in the forest, someone yelled.
    “What the hell?” she muttered. She froze with a sick feeling, as if ice water were racing through her veins, and stared at the can still perched on the log. She had missed . She didn’t think as she started running, jumping over the log. “Hey, who’s out there?” she yelled, pushing through the