Read Games of Zeus 02- Silent Echoes for Free Online Page B

hid it between pursed lips a moment later.
    “You look like a woman caught in the middle of a tragic comedy,” Tripp said after a few seconds.
    Her head tilted. “What exactly does that look like?”
    The two men pulled chairs from across the table and sat. Ian dropped a stack of folders and paper on the solid surface and, with pen in-hand, began to write. From upside down Taylor could read her name. A moment later, Ian rested his elbows on the flat surface, fingers intertwined.
    “So … tell me what you found yesterday,” Tripp said.
    Taylor’s entire body tensed. They were just bones. Someone’s skeleton. A cemetery for sure. That’s all. She relayed what she’d been doing before they showed up—as if they didn’t know. “The bones though—I don’t know. It was … really weird. I mean … the face was pointing to the sky with the jaw open. That’s all I saw.” With my eyes. “I don’t know where it came from or why it was there. I have no idea who they were. Are.” She shook her head at herself. “I bought the house with the shed. I tore it down so I could put in a garden. I don’t understand any of this, or why they think I’m connected to this in any way.” Taylor clasped and undid her hands underneath the table.
    “Can you tell me about the previous owners of the house?”
    “Not really. Other than it came through the original estate, but the place had been a rental for years. I snatched it up on a foreclosure. Did the entire renovation myself—just like on your place.” She closed her eyes, bringing to mind Tripp’s farmhouse. “I picked my house because I fell in love with the land and the possibilities … and because it’s the last of the Weaton farm bungalows.” The image of cars, people, equipment, tools and anything else running itself over her roses and the new lawn she’d sodded no more than a few weeks before had her grimacing. “I’d just bought it when I came back from Alabama and was just starting my company. I wanted a showpiece, but not like this.”
    Ian separated his hands and fiddled with the gaudy, gold monstrosity of a ring around his finger.
    Tripp clasped his hands in front of himself. “The press, obviously, has gotten wind of this, and there’s talk about something happening before you came back here. I can get the files, but I’d rather hear what happened from you.”
    “In Alabama, you mean?” She knew, at some point, that experience would come back to bite her.
    “Yes,” Tripp said.
    Anger boiled. “I should have killed him.” Good gracious, what are you thinking, saying that out loud? She closed her eyes, drew in a breath and exhaled. “Strike that. Pretend I didn’t say that.”
    “Okay. Who?”
    “An ex.” Memories of that day flooded her mind.
    “Tell me.”
    Ian picked up the pen again.
    “He staged his own death—a murder of all things—and set me up. I’d come home to blood all over my apartment, a shotgun on the table and a lack of a body. Of course, despite the number of cop shows on television, I went straight for that damn gun and grabbed it, coating my hands in blood. Cops showed up ten minutes after I got home, as if they’d been called. I never even dialed 9-1-1.” She heaved air. “Took ‘em two days to test the blood, found out it was his, figured I stashed the body. They spent over a week interrogating me, and the newspapers were all over it. ‘College student murders boyfriend in jealous rage’. That’s what the headlines said. I was guilty before I ever got a chance to get my story told.” Her hands clenched even with the cuffs around her wrists. “I lived in the county jail, in podunk Alabama for two weeks, going back and forth with their investigators until someone at a bar saw the bastard—alive and well—and reported him.” Taylor’s cheeks flushed with heat as anger filled her. “He ended up in jail, himself, but not before I had the full experience.” She faced Tripp. “I never imagined I’d see the