Read Revenge is Sweet (A Samantha Church Mystery) for Free Online Page B

chair and walked to Nick’s office. Doing her best to contain her emotions, she knocked on the door with the knuckle of her index finger. Nick looked in her direction, eating a jelly doughnut. On his desk there was a coffee cup with a 7-11 logo and the lid off. He motioned her into his office without saying a word and pointed with his doughnut to the only empty chair in the room. She walked in and sat down. Nick took a bite of the doughnut and got up and closed the door.
    He sat down and swiveled in his chair to face her. When he did, Sam noticed that some of the red filling from the doughnut was caught on the right corner of his mustache. He set the doughnut down and used a napkin he got from the convenience store to wipe some of the jelly filling from his fingers, but not his mustache. He looked at Sam over the top of his glasses, which were perched in their usual spot at the tip of his nose. It drove Sam crazy that he’d never push them up to the bridge of his nose where she thought they belonged. Sam guessed Nick to be in his mid forties. Not old by any means, but she always had the impression that he acted years older. “I should fire you right now,” he said.
    Sam almost laughed. “I hear you thought I had skipped off to Mexico with Wilson,” she said instead, ignoring his comment.
    Nick Weeks looked at her as if to say ‘well, didn’t you?’ Sam raised her left wrist to their eye level, her bandage the focal point between them. The reality of what Sam had been through was finally dawning on her. She drew a deep, involuntary breath.
    “I was in hell last week,” she said, still holding her wrist in the air. “I don’t know where you really thought I was, Nick, but I can tell you it wasn’t Mexico. When Wilson and I left here last Tuesday night we were kidnapped.”
    Sam hesitated only a moment. “We were jumped by three men and taken somewhere. And wherever that was, I think Wilson’s still there.”
    Sam bit her bottom lip. For the first time since waking in the hospital and seeing Howard’s b ald head, she felt like crying, and if she was going to cry about it, she sure as hell wasn’t going to do it in front of Nick Bloody Weeks. She straightened her shoulders, collected herself and told Nick everything she could remember about the kidnapping.
    She ended by saying, “They obviously knew our schedules, knew that Wilson was leaving the next morning for Puerto Va llarta and knew…”
    Her voice trailed off, thinking of what Howard had said to her in the hospital.
    “Why are you still in that apartment? Why don’t you come live with your grandmother and me? At least then, for Heaven’s sake, you wouldn’t be alone and we’d know to call someone if you didn’t come home at night.”
    Sadness tugged at her heart. She was alone in her apartment and her life now more than she had ever been. With Robin gone and April living with her grandmother, Sam had no one except her own grandmother and Howard. She remembered a day soon after she broke her big story. She had traveled to her grandmother’s ranch to ask if she could live with her until she got herself and her life back in order. Sam remembered how Nona had cried.
    “Of course. Of course, Sammie.” Nona had said over and over.
    She forced herself to tell Nick the rest of the story, over the lump in her throat and a sadness that tugged at her heart like a small child pulling on her sleeve. “And somehow they knew that I wouldn’t be missed.”
    When she finished she directed her attention to a watercolor painting over Nick’s desk, an autumn landscape beneath a vast blue sky. She waited for Nick to speak, but he was speechless, just as Anne had been.
    “I think we need to call the police,” Nick said finally.
    “I think it’d be better if we waited to hear from the kidnappers instead,” Sam said.
    There was an extended silence in the room, allowing Sam to hear the muffled voices of co-workers greeting each other as they began to