Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 128083 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128083 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
God, his heart. He was tempted to reach up and rub his chest as if he could massage the pain away. To imagine such a thing—Cami kneeling over her dying mother as she tried to leave her daughter with a few final words. “What did she say?” he asked quietly.
“I thought she said ‘do of,’ and then ‘do of her.’ Like I said, they never made sense. Where was she going to go from there? I never came up with anything.”
His mind churned, something clicking into place. Something impossible, perhaps. “Do you think she was saying . . .”
“Do-over,” she said softly as she turned and met his eyes. “She might have been saying do-over.”
He frowned, trying to make the connection between the crime Cami had lived through when she was only a teen and the one that had been committed against Cyrus. Her son. “If that was it,” he finally said, “then there’s a connection between your mother’s and sister’s murders, and Cyrus’s kidnapping.”
“Yes. But I have no idea what. The only connection between the two is . . . me. But how does Cyrus come into something that happened so long ago? Even I didn’t know with certainty that I was pregnant when my mother and sister were murdered.”
Rex took a sip of wine as he looked out over the gently swaying trees. An owl hooted, and somewhere he heard the distant sound of coyotes baying at the moon. “Could your mother have been made the same offer you were? The offer of a do-over?”
“Of what, though?”
He thought about that. “I guess if it was similar to the offer made to you, it’d be to do something differently that happened in her past. Maybe to make some move that would stop the crime you experienced?”
She sipped at her wine and gave her head a small shake. “By all her accounts, though, my mother had a happy childhood. My grandparents were wonderful people who were a big part of our lives until they passed away of natural causes when I was in high school.”
“Unless something happened that she never told you about. People often try to put bad experiences out of their mind entirely. To pretend they didn’t occur at all.”
She was quiet as she appeared to think about that. “No. My mother, she wasn’t . . . she wasn’t a secretive person. And she was happy and well adjusted. I don’t know. Her having this secret life doesn’t track.”
“Okay. What about your father?”
“It was my mother who said the words, though.”
“Could your dad have told her if he’d received such a call? Like the one you received?”
“Yes. It’s possible. Or she intercepted a message meant for him?”
“He was a judge. He had to have some enemies, right? Solely by what he did as a job.”
“I don’t know if enemies is the right word, but yes, of course. I’m sure there were those who were bitter toward him for his judgment in their case. I can’t imagine any judge who doesn’t have at least a few of those. But the police investigated that. They looked into any threats or accusations or recent cases where the convicted made statements denigrating him, or even the system at large. I was . . . sort of disengaged mentally at the time. But it seemed like they did their due diligence looking at that angle.”
“So the police never came up with any possible motive beyond evil and opportunity?”
“That’s what it looked like. It seemed like those men randomly chose us. They were seen on camera following my mom and sister in a public place. They obviously tried to avoid cameras, but they were clearly discussing them.” She paused, obviously recalling what she knew. “But then the things they said in the midst of . . . the crime. They mentioned that the point was that my dad saw us being tortured.” She turned and looked at him. His heart felt hollow whenever she spoke of what she’d experienced. He almost didn’t want to hear about it because he hurt for her. But she had survived it. If she could do that, he could certainly withstand her memories. “What point, though? If it was random, if they simply spotted my mom and sister out shopping and decided they wanted to rob and abuse them, there wouldn’t be a point other than that. Also, they used my name. I mean, there could have been other ways they’d learned that. They went through our safe, and there were things on the calendar on the fridge that referenced my name, but . . . I don’t know. It jarred me at the time.”
“What did the police say about those things?”
“That I misremembered what was said. I wasn’t considered a good witness. I was traumatized. Maybe I—”
“Don’t doubt yourself, Cami. You were there.”