In the Waning Light Read Online Free

there’s no denying we are all products of our pasts, are we not, Meg? No matter how we try to pave it over, those subconscious drivers shape us. Will you write it one day—the Sherry Brogan story?” He paused. “Or is this the one story you cannot write?”
    Out of the corner of Meg’s eye, her publicist made a panicked rolling movement with her hand: go with it, roll with it, almost over. Jonah stood stiff.
    Meg smiled, folded her hands neatly on her lap. And sat silent. Television, radio hosts hated dead space. Her eyes locked with his, warning him that her line in the sand lay right here.
    “It certainly has all the commercial elements you look for,” he prompted. “The darkly seductive, devastatingly handsome young antihero from the wrong side of the tracks. A man who volunteered at the local animal shelter. He rapes and murders Shelter Bay’s golden girl, homecoming queen, forever tearing apart and changing a town. All-American values, innocence lost. Telling your story might be as cathartic for you as it was for Gloria Lulofs. Do you ever fear, Meg, that what is locked in your memory might have changed the outcome, that your father might not have ended up in prison?”
    She lurched to her feet and reached for the mic pinned to her blouse.
    His hands shot up in surrender. “No worries.” He smiled at his audience. See? I rattled the big-name crime author . See her vulnerabilities exposed now?
    He held up her book again. “ Sins Not Forgotten . On sale from tomorrow. Thank you, Meg Brogan, for joining us on The Evening Show .”
    Applause sounded. There were shuffles in the shadows. A cough.
    Meg unclipped the mic and dumped it on the chair. She spun around, stepped off the dais, strode toward Jonah and her publicist, her high heels clicking on wood, face hot. Stathakis came rapidly after her. He placed his hand on her arm. Meg spun back at him, anger stomping through her chest. “We had an agreement,” she said, very quietly. “My sister’s murder was off-limits tonight. I refuse to be pigeonholed by something that happened to my family twenty-two years ago.”
    “I’m sorry—”
    “Like hell you are,” she ground out through her teeth. “You intended using Sherry’s story from the moment you first mentioned it backstage. I should have—” She felt Jonah’s arm sliding around her waist.
    “Relax, Megan,” Jonah said softly in her ear as he drew her away. Her publicist stepped in front of Stathakis to run interference.
    “Not worth it,” Jonah whispered, leading her out of the studio.
    But Stathakis’s words dogged her into the chill winter night.
    What is locked in your memory might have changed the outcome . . . or is this the one story you cannot write . . .

    “Let it go. You did fine,” Jonah said as he escorted Meg along the waterfront to the restaurant for a late, celebratory dinner. Icy wind whipped about them, carrying the briny scent of ocean. The halyards of yachts chinked against masts, float planes straining against moorings as waves slapped pontoons. Tiny snowflakes had begun to crystallize in the January night and they pricked Meg’s cheeks. The radio in the cab on the way over had reported heavy snow already falling in the Cascades.
    “Besides, you looked great. That’s what really matters.”
    Meg cast him a sardonic glance. He grinned at her and she felt a familiar punch of attraction. Jonah was dark and handsome in his wool coat—a sleek and powerful jaguar in an urban jungle. He carried authority in the set of his shoulders, in the athletic grace of his stride. His was a command presence born out of a supreme confidence in his own intellect and genetic good fortune. A forensic psychiatrist with a private consultancy in demand by law enforcement agencies around the globe, Jonah was Meg’s on-tap resource with the psychopathology of the real-life villains in her books, often sitting in with her on much-coveted pre- and post-trial interviews. The package came with