Break Point Read Online Free Page A

at her chest. Her fingers peeked out from the banda ge. “I just need time to heal.”
    “Okay, then you have some time to kill. What do you say in the meantime you play detective with me and help find the guy who did this to you?”
    There was an energy surrounding him that swept her up like a wave. It had nothing to do with his designer clothes and drop-dead smile, but more like a vibe he radiated. Something wild and spontaneous. And scary.
    “Daddy says I should give you a chance.” she finally said. “So I guess I’ll have to give you one. I’ll go see if I can find some of Geoffrey’s files on the investigation. Maybe that’s a place you can start.” She got up from the couch, knocking him in the shoulder as she breezed by.
    “You need help?” He called after her.
    “It’s not like I’m paralyzed. I can do it myself.”
    Summer flipped on the light in Geoffrey’s office and pulled open his closet door. She was shocked by all the stuff he’d stashed in there. Papers and boxes and crates. The shelves were lined with small plastic bins neatly labeled with colored markers.
    Her eyes moved from high to low, cursing his penchant for being a pack rat, yet thankful things were in chronological order. He had business documents dating from the early eighties all the way through to his most recent labeled ‘Vitale Acquisition.’ She rolled her eyes. She wished he would give that whole thing up. Anston Vitale would never give up his lucrative tennis empire no matter how much money Geoffrey threw at him. Why he wasted his time was inexplicable to her.
    Finally, she spotted the boxes labeled “investigation.” She stood up on her toes and looked inside the ones on top of the stacks. Nothing. One by one she pulled them off the shelves, all as empty as the last. “Why would he get rid of everything?” she asked herself as more boxes crashed to the carpet.
    She lunged over a pile of papers and pressed the ‘ON’ button on the computer. Her foot beat the deep-pile Berber while she waited for the hard drive to boot up.
    “How ya doing back here?”
    Frantically she maneuvered the mouse on the computer screen. “It’s gone.” she stammered. “All of it. Everything. Gone.”
    “What do you mean gone?”
    “I mean gone! The investigation stuff. All of Geoffrey’s files.”
    Jake came toward the computer. He reached around her for the mouse and stared at the screen. “Maybe he put it somewhere else.”
    “I looked,” she insisted. “Even the hard drive has been emptied. All these boxes were filled with police findings and USTF reports.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Why would he get rid of all the paperwork?”
    “Search me,” Jake replied. “Why don’t you call him and see what he knows?”
    “He turns his phone off after eight p.m. when he’s on location.”
    Jake waded through the mess, picking through the empty boxes on the floor. “You’re sure this is where everything is stored. There are no other filing cabinets or office spaces where it could be?
    “If there were, would I be sitting here talking to you?”
    He folded his arms across his chest, his well-defined muscles stretching the sleeves of his t-shirt. “Okay, so I can’t read about it, but I can hear a first hand account.”
    “You mean you want me to tell you what happened?”
    Jake spun the desk chair around and straddled it. “I think you could tell me more than any piece of paper could anyway.”
    Summer gulped. Was this a test? Was there a “right” story she was supposed to tell? One that would be relayed back to her dad? Either way, talking about it was the worst. Words somehow made things more real. In the days after it happened, it was Geoffrey who gave the story to the press and after her initial interview, he didn’t allow her to speak with the police. He told her he knew how painful it was and the less she talked about it the easier it would be to forget. “I don’t remember much about it really,” she said