Read I Have a Secret (A Sloane Monroe Novel, Book Three) for Free Online

the phone slipped from my hand and plummeted to the carpet.  I bent down and picked it up in time to hear her say, “Sloane, are you still there?”
    The only thing I could mutter was, “I’ll be there in the morning.  Everything’s going to be okay…I’m coming.”
    Maddie’s face filled with concern.  “I know that look.”  
    “Another one of my classmates was just found outside the local gym.” 
    “Found what?  Passed out because his workout was too intense?”
    I shook my head.  “Stabbed.  He’s dead.” 

 
    The last time I stepped foot in my hometown of Tehachapi, California had been for my aunt’s funeral several years earlier.  At that time, it surprised me how much the town had changed in the years since my move to Park City, Utah.  To return and see all the differences was like running into an old boyfriend who’d been voted Best Hair in school, beating out all the guys and the girls, and then finding time had left him not just with a bald spot, but bald all together.  This type of thing might have been acceptable had the old boyfriend entered the UFC or was blessed with a name like Bruce Willis, but if he was skinny and had a square-shaped head, well, it just wasn’t the same thing.  And that’s what Tehachapi had become to me—different, almost to the point of indistinguishable.  Whether it was different bad or different good had yet to be determined.
    I entered town on Highway 58 and was amazed to find my aunt’s old billboard still hoisted up twenty-something feet in the air on the right-hand side of the road.  The town had commissioned the painting when I was in high school.  She’d divided it into four sections, one for every season of the year.  Each section reflected something different: The mountains, a sprawling orchard with rows and rows of fruit trees, the windmills, and of course, the snow.  Back then the sign had read:
     
    WELCOME TO TEHACHAPI
    LAND OF FOUR SEASONS
     
    What the sign said back then was true, and the locals joked that not only was the town capable of four seasons, but all four could be experienced in the same day.  Twenty years of weather like that tarnished the sign which no one had bothered to maintain.  It bent inward, the wood had split and chipped away sections of paint, and the sun had produced a magic fading act.  Now all that remained was:
     
    TO TEHACHAPI
    LAND OF FOUR
     
    Time for a new sign.
    I veered off the exit onto Tehachapi Boulevard and drove several blocks until I reached Peach Street. 
    Trista was outside on the porch when I drove up sporting a ball cap and dark sunglasses and leaning on her mailbox for support.  “I’m glad you came,” she said when I exited the car.  “I didn’t think you’d get here so fast.”
    Thanks to Giovanni’s private plane, nothing was out of my reach.  “I just wish it wouldn’t have taken something like this to get me here.”
    She motioned for me to follow her with her hand.  “The kids are still at school.  Come inside and we can talk.” 
    I followed her through the door and removed my shoes.  She turned and said, “Do you need anything?  Water?  Soda?  I think I have some Diet Pepsi in the fridge.” 
    Before I could respond I felt something hard brush beneath one of my feet.  I flew forward and grabbed the corner of the wall to brace myself so I wouldn’t go down.
    Trista scrunched up her nose like she’d just found something old in the fridge.  “You don’t have any kids, do you?”
    “What makes you say that?”
    “The way you tiptoed your way around the room when you walked in here like you thought a grenade would go off.”
    I looked at the reddened area beneath my foot and tried to push through the pain like it was nothing.  “How many do you have?”
     “Kids?”
    I nodded.
     “Three.”
    She pointed to a collage of photos on the wall.  There were two boys who appeared to be twins and one girl who was much older.  “My two boys, Joshua and