The Sketcher's Mark (Lara McBride Thrillers Book 1) Read Online Free Page B

believed nothing could hurt them.  Lara was sure her husband never brought his work home, though.  They were good people.  She envied them.
    “I’m fine.  I wanted to come back.  I got my head straight again.”
    “If you say so,” Hoyt nodded.  “I go with you, Lara.  You just make sure you talk to me if you need to.  No more keeping this crap trapped inside.  It poisons the soul.”
     
    A uniformed Officer opened the door, mid twenties, fit, eager, ready to impress Hoyt.
    “Sir, I just talked with the neighbors.  They say there was a guy renting a room here.  He left a few hours ago on foot carrying a suitcase.  I figured it’s important.”
    “Slow down, son, there’ll be no more crimes left to solve,” Hoyt pulled the rookie cop inside the room, put his arm around his shoulder, making him feel important.  Lara watched, remembering how he had used the same trick with her on their first case together several years ago. 
    “You think this is important, sir?” the Rookie asked, already seeing advancement in his future.  “Cos I got my application in for the Detectives exam.”
    “And you’re gonna ace it, kid,” Hoyt smiled at Lara as she walked out of the room.
     
    Moving down the hallway, she saw the Forensics team had their UV light going in the bathroom.  She stood in the doorway and watched the lights exposing the bodily fluids under the black light.  The Forensics Officer turned back to her and Barnes.
    “This tub’s covered in blood,” he announced.
    Barnes watched her silently, and she thought he was going to call her a “witch” again as he had done many times before, but he had nothing left to say tonight.  His look was one of complete disbelief.
    “That really is a nice suit, Jerry,” she said, as a farewell fuck you on her way out the door.
     
     
    Chapter Three
     
    Los Angeles International Airport
     
     
    Lara had looked at every passenger coming through the arrival gate off the plane from Paris and not one of them was her sister Janelle.  She haunted the terminal, thinking maybe Janelle had slipped past her somehow, caught an earlier flight perhaps.  She checked the arrival monitors and saw there was another flight coming in from Paris in an hour.  She’d got Janelle’s message that she was running late.  She wasn’t surprised.  If she had missed her flight in Paris, the airline could have rerouted her through any European city to get back to Los Angeles, even spun her through multiple connections in the US.  If Janelle’s phone was out of juice, she might not have had a chance to call and tell her which route she was on.  That meant Lara was destined to spend the night at LAX waiting for a call, listening to the PA system for her name to be called to come meet her sister at a Guest Services or wait for a call from an airport payphone. But that deep uneasy feeling she got that she was infamous and despised for at work was beginning to creep in like a slow rolling fog.
     
    Getting rerouted had happened to Lara before when she had traveled, visiting Homicide Units across the country and one time when she had gone to shadow the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico.  That little voice in the back of her mind was whispering to her now as it did at work. She went outside, lit a cigarette and watched the couples and families and friends reunite after their trips or seeing each other for the first time in ages.  There were a lot of smiles and people hugging each other.  Even though she seemed to be surrounded by love and people at their best, Lara McBride had never felt so alone.
     
     
    Chapter Four
     
    Sharelle sat behind the airline’s Help Desk, more interested in the nail polish she was applying to her fingers than she was in the woman asking about her sister who had missed her flight.  The woman had walked up a few minutes earlier and had asked about the passenger manifest for the airline’s flights out of Paris.  Sharelle had no intention