The Girl Who Cried Murder

“Figure out what?” he asked, taking the folder Heller handed him.

“That family just makes you stronger.” Heller nodded at the folder. “Take a look at what our background check division came up with.”

“That was quick.” Mike opened the folder. Staring up at him was an eight-by-ten glossy photo of a dark-haired young woman. Teenager, he amended after a closer look. Sophisticated looking, but definitely young. She didn’t look familiar. “This isn’t the woman from my class.”

“I know. Her name was Alice Bearden.”

Mike looked up sharply. “Was?”

“She died about ten years ago. Two days before Christmas in a hit-and-run accident. The driver was never found.”

Mike grimaced. So young. And so close to Christmas. “Bearden,” he said. “Any relation to that Bearden guy whose face is plastered on every other billboard from here to Paducah?”

“Craig Bearden. Candidate for US Senate.” Heller nodded toward the folder in Mike’s lap. “Keep reading.”

Mike flipped through the rest of the documents in the file. They were mostly printouts of online newspaper articles about the accident and a few stories about Craig Bearden’s run for the Senate. “Bearden turned his daughter’s death into a political platform. Charming.”

“His eighteen-year-old daughter obtained a fake ID so she could purchase alcohol in a bar. The bartender may have been fooled by the fake ID, but that doesn’t excuse him from serving so much alcohol she was apparently too drunk to walk straight. And maybe her inebriation was what led her to wander into the street in front of a moving vehicle, but whoever hit her didn’t stop to call for help.”

“And he’s now crusading against what exactly?”

“All of the above? The bartender was never charged, and the bar apparently still exists today, so I guess if he sued, he lost. Maybe this is his way of feeling he got some sort of justice for his daughter.”

Mike looked at the photo of Alice Bearden again. A tragedy that her life was snuffed out, certainly. But he hadn’t asked Heller to look into Alice Bearden’s background.

“What does this have to do with Charlie Winters?” he asked.

“Read the final page.”

Mike scanned the last page. It was earliest of the articles on the accident, he realized. The dateline was December 26, three days after the accident. He scanned the article, stopping short at the fourth paragraph.

Miss Bearden was last seen at the Headhunter Bar on Middleburg Road close to midnight,

accompanied by another teenager, Charlotte Winters of Bagwell.

“Charlie Winters was with Alice when she died?”

“That seems to be the big question,” Heller answered. “Nobody seems to know what happened between the time they left the bar and when Alice’s body was found in the middle of the road a couple of hours later.”

Mike’s gaze narrowed. “Charlie refused to talk?”

“Worse,” Heller answered. “I talked to the lead investigator interviewed in the article. He’s still with the county sheriff’s department and remembers the case well. According to him, Charlotte Winters claims to have no memory of leaving the bar at all. As far as she’s concerned, almost the whole night is one big blank.”

“And what does he think?”

“He thinks Charlie Winters might have gotten away with murder.”

Chapter Two

Making four copies was overkill, wasn’t it?

Charlie looked at the flash drive buried at the bottom of the gym bag’s inner pocket. Were four copies a sign of paranoia?

“I wonder if Mike is married.” The voice was female, conspiratorial and close by.

Charlie looked up to find one of her fellow students applying lipstick using a small compact mirror. Midthirties, decent shape, softly pretty. Kim, Charlie thought, matching the name from Monday’s roll call to the face. She’d tried to memorize all the names and faces from the class. Partly as a game to relieve her boredom, but partly because the knowledge might come in handy someday.

Like during the zombie apocalypse?

Oh man. She was paranoid, wasn’t she?

“I didn’t expect him to be so hot,” Kim said, punctuating the statement with the snap of her compact closing. “I didn’t see a ring.”

“Maybe he doesn’t like to wear it when he’s engaging in self-defense activities.” Charlie grimaced at her lame response. Kim was clearly trying to be friendly, seeking to engage Charlie with a topic they might both find intriguing. And her response was to cut her off at the knees?

“Maybe.” Kim’s smile faded. “Probably. A guy that good-looking is either married by this age or gay.”

“Or commitment-phobic,” Charlie added.

“Honey, that can sometimes be a feature, not a bug.” Kim finger-combed her honey-blond hair and smiled. “You ready?”

“Sure.” Charlie walked with Kim out of the locker room into the gymnasium, where about half the number of their Monday classmates were already waiting. Today, the gymnasium floor was covered nearly wall-to-wall with padded floor mats. Apparently they were going to do more than just take notes today.

Thank goodness.

Mike Strong stood against the front wall, flipping through papers secured on a clipboard, his brow furrowed with concentration. The light slanting in from the east-facing windows bathed him in golden warmth.

Beside Charlie, Kim released a gusty sigh. “Lord have mercy.”

Mike put the clipboard on the floor beside him and looked up at the students gathering in front of him. His gaze settled on Charlie for a moment, and he smiled at her. To her surprise, her stomach turned an unexpected flip.

“Oh, wow,” Kim murmured. “Probably not gay, then.”

“This is crazy,” Charlie muttered, as much to herself as to Kim.

Mike checked his watch, the movement flexing his biceps and sending her stomach on another tumble. “It’s time to get started. Everybody remember the stretches?”

Charlie’s heart was beating far more quickly than her exertion level warranted. She forced herself to keep her gaze averted from Mike Strong’s lean body and focused instead on maximizing the flex of her muscles.

But when she looked up again, Mike was walking slowly through the small clump of students, observing their efforts. He stopped in front of her and crouched, his voice lowering to a rumble. “You’ve done this before.”

“High school gym,” she answered, trying not to meet his gaze.

“Not college?”

Her gaze flicked up despite her intentions. “College, too. Core requirement.”

His lips curved. “So I hear.”

“You didn’t have phys ed classes in college?”

“I went straight from high school to Parris Island,” he said with a smile. “Lots and lots of phys ed, you could say.”

She dropped her gaze again, but it was too late. Now she was picturing him in fatigues, out in the hot South Carolina sun, sweat gleaming on his sculpted muscles and darkening the front of his olive drab T-shirt...

When she risked another peek, he’d moved on, walking from student to student, offering suggestions to improve their stretches. She let go of her breath, realizing her exhalation sounded suspiciously like the gusty sigh Kim had released earlier as they entered the gym.

“All right,” Mike said a few minutes later, “I’m going to pair you up and we’re going to talk about some of the basic escape moves. This really shouldn’t be the first thing we do, but I can tell by the low attendance today that maybe you want a little less talk and a lot more action.”

A few laughs greeted Mike’s words, along with a few murmurs of agreement. Then everybody fell silent, watching with interest as Mike paired them up.

He left Charlie for last. There was nobody left to pair up with, she realized with a flutter of dismay. It was fifth-grade kickball all over again.

“You’re with me,” Mike said bluntly, nodding toward the front of the pack. She followed him with reluctance, revising her earlier thought. It wasn’t kickball. It was Public Speaking 101, and it was Charlie’s turn at the front of the class.

Heat flooded her cheeks, no doubt turning her pale skin bright red. Her hands trembled so hard she shoved them in the pockets of her sweatpants and tried not to meet the gaze of anyone else in the gym.

“If you’ve read any books or watched any movies or TV shows, you’ve probably heard of the vulnerable spots on an assailant and some of the ways to target them. Knee to the groin. Foot to the instep or the knee. Fingers to the eyes or heel of the hand to the cartilage of the nose.” There were soft groans at the images those words invoked. “Those are all vulnerable targets on an attacker, true. But how easy is it for a small person to do damage to a larger person, even targeting those areas? That’s what we’re going to experiment with today.”

Charlie realized he’d paired people up by size, small with large. At the moment, most of the larger people in the pairings were looking around with alarm.

Mike nodded toward the side of the room, where a man stood in the doorway next to what looked like a large laundry bin. “This is Eric Brannon. He’s a doctor. I thought y’all might want him to stick around for this.”

Eric grinned. Charlie’s classmates didn’t.

“He’s also got some equipment to hand out.”

Eric reached into the bin and pulled out something that looked like a cross between a life jacket and a catcher’s chest guard. He handed it to the man standing closest to him and continued through the other students, passing out padding to the larger of each pair.

Eric stopped before giving anything to Mike. Charlie looked up at the instructor, one eyebrow arched.

Mike grinned back at her, then turned to the class. “We’re going to start with the first thing you need to know how to deal with—someone grabbing you.”

Without warning, he reached out and wrapped his arm around Charlie’s shoulders, pulling her back hard against his chest.

She gasped, caught entirely flat-footed, and began struggling on instinct. His grip tightened and he lifted her off her feet.

Her vision seemed to darken around the edges, sight becoming a single pinpoint of light as anger fought with panic.

Damn it, Charlie. Do something!

She was back in a darkened alley outside the Headhunter Bar. The world was tilted and spinning, like she was stuck on a merry-go-round twirling at an impossible rate of speed. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.

She kicked her heel backward, hitting his shin with a glancing blow that didn’t even elicit a grunt. His grip tightened. Clawing at his rock-hard arms with her fingers had no effect at all. She stamped her heel down on his foot, but his boots were hard and her foot glanced off, which was probably the only thing that saved her from a broken foot of her own.

I’m sorry, Charlie, but I have to do the rest of this by myself. Alice’s whispered words rang in her ears, clarity in a world of insanity.

She stopped struggling, and the grip on her shoulders loosened. The world seeped back in brilliant light and color, and panic won over anger. She dropped her whole weight downward, slipping from his grip, and rolled as hard as she could into his knee. The move sent Mike sprawling to the mat, and Charlie scrambled to her feet and ran for the door, her whole body rattling with the need to escape at all costs.

Eric Brannon caught her arm, pulling her to a jerky halt. She was about to fight when she realized he was smiling at her.

She made herself stop running. It was just a class. Just a game, really.

No dark alley. No woozy world. No whispers in her ear.

“Nice job,” Eric murmured, his blue eyes bright with amusement.

She looked at Mike, who was back on his feet. Unlike Eric, he wasn’t smiling. Instead, he was watching her with a knowing wariness that made her stomach twist. After a moment, however, his expression cleared and he motioned her over. “That was actually a pretty good example of one of the things we’re going to talk about today,” he said as she walked with reluctance to his side. “What Charlie did was to use deception to change her circumstances. The more she struggled, the tighter I held her. When she seemed to give up, to stop struggling, I loosened my grip. It’s a natural response—assailants can tire of the struggle as well, even if they’re considerably stronger and larger than their targets.”

Charlie slanted him a skeptical look. He didn’t look as if he’d tired at all. She was pretty sure he could have held her in check a whole lot longer than he had.

He met her gaze, his smile seemingly warm. But he was smiling only with his mouth. His green eyes were narrowed and still wary.

“The other thing she did is what I’d like to address today,” he added. “As soon as she was in the position to do so, Charlie bowled me over. She used her full weight to catch me off balance and send me to the ground. And yet I outweigh her by at least eighty pounds. Probably more. Which goes to show, even if your assailant is larger than you, you have more leverage than you think.”

Charlie wrapped her arms around her, feeling exposed and vulnerable. She edged back toward the wall as Mike Strong walked the rest of the students through an attacker’s vulnerable points and how to strike back at those areas more effectively.

“Put your weight into everything you do. If you can hurt them, you’re that much closer to knocking them down and getting away. Now, I want the bigger partners to suit up and play the part of the attacker. Smaller partners, go after the pressure points. For now, avoid the nose and face. What I want you to practice is putting your full weight into everything you do. Turn your body into a weapon.”

The rest of the group got started. There was a lot of noise, most of it self-conscious laughter. Charlie watched the others for a moment, until she felt Mike’s gaze on her.

She looked at him. He was studying her as if she were some scientific experiment on display. Her cheeks, which had finally started to cool off, went hot again.

She half expected him to ask her what the hell had happened when he grabbed her. Surely he’d seen that her panic had been real.

But when he spoke, he asked, “Have you had any self-defense training before?”

“I was a skinny freckled redhead in public school,” she answered, going for levity. “I had twelve years of self-defense training.”

He smiled faintly. “Formal training?”

“I’ve read a lot. Watched a lot of videos on the ’net.”

“So you’ve done the mental work. Just not the physical.”

“Something like that.”

“I have an intermediate class that meets Tuesday and Thursday afternoons at four. Do you think you could make that class?”

He thought she should go into an intermediate class? Why? She hadn’t exactly covered herself in glory so far.

“I have a flexible work schedule,” she said finally, wondering just what an intermediate self-defense class would entail. “But I’m really just a beginner,” she added quickly. “I just got lucky earlier.”

“That wasn’t luck. That was your instincts kicking in. You’ve internalized the lessons in your head. Now your body needs to learn how to do the things your brain has already processed. But there’s no need for you to start from the beginning when you’d be learning a lot more in an advanced class.”

Charlie narrowed her eyes, not sure she trusted Mike Strong’s motives for wanting to move her out of the beginner class. She’d seen the wariness in his eyes earlier. And even now, there was a hint of tension in his jaw when he spoke, as if he was trying to hide his real thoughts.

“You think I could keep up?” she asked.

“I think so. If you feel differently after a class or two, you can always come back to this class.”

“And is self-defense the only thing you learn in the intermediate class?” she asked before she thought the question through.

His brow creased. “What else would you be looking to learn?”

She cleared her throat. “I just meant—there’s more to protecting yourself than just being able to get out of physical situations, isn’t there?”

Mike looked at her for a long moment, then jerked his attention away, his gaze shifting across the gymnasium, as if he’d just remembered that he was supposed to be supervising the class. “Darryl, the padding doesn’t mean you can be a brute. This is our first time out. Try not to break Melanie’s neck, how about it?”

Charlie watched the rest of the class giggle and grunt their way through the exercises while Mike went through the group, offering suggestions and gentle correction. Right about now, she’d give anything to be one of them, one of the group instead of standing here like a flagpole in the middle of the desert, visible from every direction.

Mike finally wandered back to where she stood. “The intermediate class is mainly about physical self-defense,” he finally answered in response to her earlier question. “But if you have any specific questions about how to protect yourself, you can always ask.”

“If I do, I will,” she said, not sure she meant it. He was giving off all the vibes of a man who was suspicious of her motives, and considering her little freak-out a few minutes ago, she couldn’t really blame him.

The last thing she needed to do was pique his curiosity.

“So, I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon in the intermediate course?” Mike glanced at her, his expression suggesting he wasn’t sure she’d say yes.

But he wanted her to say yes, she realized.

The question was, why?

“Yes,” she said finally. “I’ll be there.”

“Can you stick around for the rest of the class?”

The twinkle in his eyes gave her pause, but she made herself smile. “Should I say no?”

He laughed. “There are still a few moves I need to show the class. And since you’re here...”

“I get to be the damsel in distress?”

He shook his head slowly. “The one thing I’m pretty sure you’ve never been, Charlie, is the damsel in distress.”

* * *

“SO, WHAT DO you think?”

Mike turned his head away from the window, dragging his gaze from Charlie’s little blue Toyota. She hadn’t emerged from the gymnasium yet; when he’d left, she’d been talking to a couple of the other students.

He met Maddox Heller’s gaze. “I don’t know. She’s hard to read.”

“In what way?”

He thought about her reaction to being called to the front of the class that morning. “She can be shy. And then turn around and be assertive. But there was something that happened today—I’m not sure how to describe it.”

“Give it a shot.”

“I was demonstrating how quickly an assailant could strike. Partly as an example, but also because I wanted to know how she’d react. I expected her to fight.”

“And she didn’t?”

“No, she fought. But there was something about the way she did it. It was as if she was somewhere else. Seeing something else.”

Heller’s expression was thoughtful. “Post-traumatic stress?”

“Maybe. She was able to keep herself together enough to escape my grasp, though. And she did it pretty well. Bowled me over.”

“There wasn’t a lot in the background check other than what I told you. The sheriff’s department never liked her story that she could remember nothing. But I don’t know if that’s because of who she is. Or, more to the point, who her family is.”

“Who are they?”

“The Winters, according to my source with the local law, are one of those families that just spell trouble. Two of her brothers are in jail. Daddy died in a mining accident when they were young, and apparently Mama tried and failed to replace him with a series of men who all brought their own brand of trouble to the family.”

“Does Charlie have a record?”

“Nothing as an adult. If she had any record as a juvenile, it’s sealed.”

“I’ve moved her up to my intermediate class,” Mike said. “The beginner class will just bore her. She might quit.”

“And you don’t want that?”

He didn’t. “Something strange is going on with that woman. I don’t know what yet. But I think it’s in our interests to find out what it is.”

He turned back to the window. Charlie was out there now, unlocking the driver’s door of the Toyota. She slid behind the steering wheel and pulled out of the parking lot, heading onto Poplar Road.

Mike’s gaze started to follow the car up the road, but something in the parking space she’d just vacated snagged his attention. There was a wet spot on the pavement beneath where the Toyota had been parked.

Right about the place where her brake line should be.

He muttered a curse and strode past Heller, already running as he hit the exit. He skidded to a stop at the empty parking place and crouched to look at the fluid on the ground.

Definitely brake fluid.

He gazed at the road, spotting the Corolla just as it started the climb up the mountain.

Without a pause for thought, he pulled his keys from his pocket and sprinted toward his truck.

* * *

THE TOYOTA HAD to be on its last legs. Fifteen years old, well-used before she’d ever bought it, the little blue Corolla had put up with a lot in the five years since she’d bought it with cash from a small used car lot over in Mercerville. The heating and air were starting to falter—never good in the dead of winter or the dog days of summer. And as she crested the mountain and started down the other side, she realized her brakes felt unresponsive, spongy beneath her foot.

That was not good.

She dropped the Corolla to a lower gear, and the vehicle’s speed slowed, but only a little. She thought about putting it in Neutral, but in the back of her mind, she had a fuzzy memory that doing so wasn’t the answer.

Damn. Why hadn’t she read that road safety brochure her insurance company had sent out last month?

Fortunately, there wasn’t much in the way of traffic on the two-lane road, but she was fast approaching a four-way stop at the bottom of the hill. There were a handful of cars clustered at the intersection, far enough away now that they looked more like specks than vehicles.

But that was changing quickly.

She dropped to an even lower gear and gave her brakes a few quick, desperate pumps. They were entirely unresponsive now.

Don’t panic don’t panic don’t panic...

The roar of an engine approaching behind her took her eyes off the road to check the rearview mirror. There was a large pickup truck coming up fast behind her. Suddenly, it swung left, around her, and whipped into the lane in front of her.

What the hell was that idiot doing?

The truck slowed as it moved in front of her, and on instinct, she stamped on her useless brakes. The front of her car bumped hard into the back bumper of the truck, bounced and hit a second time. A third time, then a fourth, each bounce less jarring until her front bumper settled against the back of the truck.

The pickup slowed to a stop, bringing her Corolla to a stop, as well. She turned on her hazard lights and put her car in Park, setting the parking brake to make sure it didn’t move any farther downhill.

The driver’s door of the pickup opened, and a tall, lean-muscled figure got out and turned to face her with a grim smile.

Mike Strong.

What the hell was going on?

Chapter Three

“The brake line’s been cut.” Bill Hardy, the mechanic at Mercerville Motors, who’d taken a look at the Corolla’s brake system, showed Charlie the laceration in the line.

Charlie stared at it in horrified fascination, trying not to relive those scary moments as she’d struggled to bring her car under control on the downhill stretch of Poplar Road. If Mike Strong hadn’t pulled his driving trick to bring her car to a stop—

Don’t think about it.

“How could that have happened?” she asked Bill.

“Well, maybe you could have kicked up a sharp rock or a piece of metal in the road,” Bill said doubtfully.

“But you don’t think so?”

“Honestly, if I didn’t know better, I’d think this was a deliberate cut.” He gave her a sidelong look. “You haven’t made any enemies lately, have you, Charlie?”