Full Circle Read Online Free Page B

she curled up in the corner of one of the sofas. "Some of the credit is yours. Not long after you left town, I set some lofty goals and became obsessed and determined to meet them as only a teenager can obsess. My obsession lasted over ten years.
    "Being who you are, what your family was to this town, you have no idea what it was like to grow up as the kid of the town drunk. People looked down on me and didn't expect anything of me. Kids made fun of me and my cast-off clothes. I was picked on and bullied for no other reason than I was Mason Raintree's throwaway niece. Being a target for ridicule when you're a kid hurts, and I'm not talking about the physical. I was an angry little monster who walked around with a lot of bitter stuff inside. You kept me straight, pretty much, although your reasons weren't exactly altruistic. You were just plain pissed most of the time because you were my target for a lot of that anger.
    "That last time, when you yanked me out of Jimmy's car, you yelled at me. Before that, you'd talked to me, you'd stuck my nose into corners, you'd spanked me, but you never yelled at me. That time, you yelled at me, and you said I was better than that. You said you expected more of me than acting like a whore in the backseat of a car. You were angry, and those words hurt. You left town a couple of weeks later. You have no idea what your words and Kitty Cartwright's words set in motion."
    Jack held up his hand, looking perplexed.
    "Oh, sorry," Josie exclaimed. "About a week after my big date with Jimmy, I overheard Kitty gossiping with some of her friends in the girls' bathroom at school. She said I'd let Jimmy fuck me. Those were her exact words. She said I was a trashy whore, and I'd be pregnant and wouldn't know who the father was before the year was out."
    "I take it you didn't?"
    "Not with Jimmy or anyone else for many years after that," Josie admitted. "You have no idea how much it hurt to hear her say those things. I ditched school and cried for hours. You had said I was better than that, but the rest of this town had a different opinion and much lower expectations. That realization hurt, but it finally sank in that no one was ever going to expect anything of me. If I didn't want Kitty to be right, I had to do something.
    "I got mad and used all that anger to buckle down. I decided that I'd show her; I'd show this whole damn town that I wasn't trash. I got an after-school job, and I studied like a demon. Up until that point, I had regularly gotten C's and B's without any effort. After that, I became the best student at Victor Rawlings High. I put the teachers into a state of shock. A couple of them even accused me of cheating, but they got used to it. I took on extra assignments and shot to the top of my classes.
    "By the following year, Mrs. Freeman had me in an accelerated program where I was bussed over to Wayland Baptist University for college courses in the afternoons. I did that during my junior and senior years. I didn't know it at the time, but the whole program was being paid for by a scholarship Mrs. Freeman arranged for me. After high school, I moved to Altus and took every course I could get at Wayland Baptist. Tuition costs are considerably lower there than at the university. Later, I transferred those credits to the University of Oklahoma and picked up some decent scholarships. From there, I went to the police academy. A couple years later, I was accepted into the CIA. Eight years after that, I was fast-tracking my way to an early demise."
    "Is this where the "ta da" moment comes in?" Jack asked.
    "Almost," Josie admitted, but her eyes took on a faded, haunted, dullness. "I worked undercover—deep undercover. I fit the profile and was able to work my way into a lot of dicey situations. I was often the bait, the hook, and the takedown."
    "Because you're beautiful," Jack said matter-of-factly.
    "Thank you," Josie said, acknowledging the compliment, but she moved on unfazed. "Yes, and I got the