Bad Boy Criminal: The Novel Read Online Free Page A

with nothing but a bullet hole in my shoulder, a blade in my boot, and five hundred dollars, cash, in one pocket. I was probably still in shock at the time.

Chapter Five
Isabelle
    I wondered if Ash liked meatloaf. Even though we lived in one of the more liberal and northern states, Bill and Hope had a lot of pride in a lifestyle best described as “country.” They wouldn’t take too kindly to the suggestion that meat was murder.
    As my lips drifted over my fork and pilfered a small bite from its tip, I only slightly relished the rich beef melting away on my tongue, salted and spiced to perfection. Normally, I spent the early minutes of dinner praising the chef, and would only lapse into thoughtful silence after expressing my irritation with every ornery creature on the farm.
    But, on that particular night, only one ornery creature was on my mind.
    My eyes tilted toward the window. It was too dark outside to see the yard; he’d be able to see me perfectly well, if he was looking. Not that it mattered. I didn’t even know the guy.
    I forced my eyes away from the window.
    I didn’t care if he liked meatloaf. He could eat or he could not eat. I’d left my inner-child behind a long time ago, and since then, I’d forgotten how boy-crazy she was.
    But the story was a fake… I was certain of it…
    Has anyone ever told you a story, and as hours go by, the more and more it falls apart?
    If he’d been shot by a hunter, the wound would have been harder to stitch. If he’d been shot by a hunter, he would have wanted to report the incident to the police. And if he’d been shot by a hunter, the blood would have been fresher, unless he wandered in our woods for hours. That was possible. And, if he’d been shot by a hunter, I would have heard a gunshot, wouldn’t I? Maybe he was just one of those guys who didn’t like to turn people in. I was like that, too.
    Except…the wound should still have been harder to stitch.
    I couldn’t shrug off that one.
    “Isabelle?” A soft touch on my shoulder drew me from staring hard at the blackened window to my left. I flinched and swung my eyes back to Bill…Dad.
    I had to remind myself to call him Dad, still. And Hope, Mom. It was hard to train myself to call them the two things I’d grown up believing were almost fantasies.
    “Isabelle, is anything the matter?” Bill asked. His large eyes, elegantly enfolded with wrinkles, seemed much older and wiser than his forty-seven years.
    I smiled. “No—sorry,” I said. “How do you get your meatloaf so moist, Mom?” I asked, turning to Hope.
    She, too, had always seemed much older than she really was. We had first met when she had only just turned fifty. Her hair was thick and long, but it had prematurely grayed, which she refused to attribute to genetics but to an abiding worry for each and every loved one she had (followed by the world at large). She wore glasses, but the eyes behind them were as sharp as a hawk’s.
    “You know the answer to that,” Hope told me, her tone shrewd; she, too, was scrutinizing me. How had they come to learn all my tricks within only three and a half years? “You don’t include the egg whites.”
    “Right.” I smiled and forced another forkful into my mouth. “I remember now.”
    Even if Ash was a liar, I thought as I dutifully demolished the plate (it would be the only way to truly stifle this low-key interrogation), I couldn’t criticize the practice. I had enough skeletons crowding my closet, as unsavory as any skeletons of his. The strange places I had known. The terrible people. I was almost ineligible for adoption by the time I met the Turners. I’d been in jail a few times, then. The hospital, too. I was no stranger to begging someone not to call the police myself, was I?
    I glanced at the black window again and decided to let it go, turning back to scrape together the last of my green beans and spear them, idly clearing the tray. I would bring him some leftover meatloaf after I did the