Read Exposed for Free Online Page A

Emma and him. It was her senior year. She constantly reminded him how much stress she was under, yet all he saw was that she wanted to go have fun and hang out at the mall or the movies with her friends.
    He grew frustrated with her cavalier attitude about studying, about her grades and yes, about college. And while he piled up college-recruitment catalogs on her bedroom desk she covered them with Bride and Glamour magazines, more excited about being her mother’s maid of honor than landing an academic scholarship to the college of her choice.
    She reminded him so much of Caroline sometimes. It didn’t help that the older she got the more she looked like her mother, the fair skin, blond hair, the sapphire-blue eyes that knew almost instinctively how to manipulate him. The only thing she seemed to get from Tully was her tall, lanky figure.
    He’d be glad when the wedding was over and done with. Only a week left. Perhaps he would survive. He didn’t need Freud to remind him that his daughter’s excitement about her mother’s new marriage didn’t just stick in his craw because she was ignoring her college plans.
    Tully didn’t begrudge Caroline getting married. This wasn’t about their divorce. That had been years ago, so many years he had to stop and count them. No, it was the nagging feeling that he was losing his daughter to Caroline’s new life.
    Right after their divorce Caroline had sent Emma to live with him so that she could move on with no reminder of her past life. Or at least that’s the way Tully played it over and over in his mind. Now everyone was excited about the wedding and just expected Tully to plod along as the everlasting bearer of stability. He hated that he was so reliable and dependable that to be anything else wasn’t even a consideration.
    He glanced at his watch. Reliable, dependable and late. It seemed to bother only him, especially the late part. Even when he called his boss, Assistant Director Cunningham, to leave a message that he would be late, he could hear Cunningham dismiss it, a bit of impatience in his voice that Tully would feel it necessary to call.
    “It doesn’t have to be this way,” Emma said, bringing him back to his senses, back to the task at hand.
    She’d flipped her hair back out of her eyes and was turned toward him, giving him that hopeful look of a little girl who wanted to make things right. They had been through a lot together in the last four years and she was right, it shouldn’t result in this current state of animosity. Once again she was the wise one, setting him straight, reminding him what was really important. No, they didn’t have to be arguing with each other and blaming each other. He welcomed a truce.
    He sighed and smiled at her just as he pulled to the curb in front of her school. But before he could tell her she was right and that he loved her, she said, “I wouldn’t have to depend on Andrea if you bought me my own car. It’d be so much easier.”
    So that’s what this was about. Tully tried to keep the disappointment from his face while Emma pecked a kiss on his cheek. She scooted across the seat and was out the door, backpack in one hand, latte in the other, brushing aside any hopes he had of an actual truce.

CHAPTER 4
    Elk Grove, Virginia
    Maggie didn’t like what she saw. The address in the note was in the middle of a quiet neighborhood of well-kept bungalows that were surrounded by huge oak trees and carefully manicured yards. The house owned by Anne B. Kellerman could be any house in any suburb in the country. Why had he chosen here?
    A red bicycle with tassels on the handlebars was left in the driveway. Two houses down a gray-haired man raked leaves. A moving truck was parked at the end of the street where a woman paced the sidewalk, directing two men with a sofa.
    No, Maggie didn’t like it at all.
    Why would anyone want to set off a bomb in a sleepy, suburban neighborhood? In the middle of the morning the only ones home were