Stolen Daughters (Detective Amanda Steele)

“As I said, I did my time. Move on. I have.”

Amanda leaned forward and angled her head. Samuel was questionable enough to bring in, but his attitude was rubbing her the wrong way. “Have you, though, or are you back to your old tricks? Why did you kill Joyce?”

“I was angry.”

“Why?”

“She was a slut,” he spat.

Amanda cringed at his reaction. “So what? She deserved to die?”

“She screwed my best friend.”

“Yet, is he still alive?”

Samuel broke eye contact, dipping his gaze to his hands.

“It takes two to play. Why didn’t you kill him too, Mr. Booth? Why just Joyce?” She had her reasons for pressing him and digging into his past.

He continued to avoid looking at their side of the table.

“Did you kill her because as the woman she deserved the punishment? To know what she’d done to you? Were you teaching her a lesson?” She wanted to see if she could get a telling reaction.

“I didn’t…”

“Didn’t what, Mr. Booth?”

“It wasn’t about punishing her. She just got me so angry.” Finally, some eye contact. His nostrils were flaring now, and his shoulders and chest heaving as he breathed heavily.

“So it was her fault?”

“Not what I meant, but, yeah, it was.”

“You get angry again recently?” She pulled a photo the folder and put it on the table. “Ashley Lynch, sixteen. She was strangled, doused with gasoline.”

He remained silent as he looked at the photo. His face was expressionless, giving nothing away.

“And Shannon Fox. Forty-three, stabbed, drugged, and mutilated.” She slapped a printout of her picture down.

“I don’t know who they are.”

“Huh, and is this from you?” She set a picture of the note next to the ones of the victims. Her entire body quaked as she did so. “Did you think I’d understand what you did? And how, in any way, are we on the same team?”

Samuel’s gaze lifted, though he remained mute.

Her heart was racing, and it was like she was watching herself, not really in possession of her faculties. “Answer me.”

“I didn’t kill either of those women.”

“That’s your story?”

“That’s my truth. And I don’t have any idea what this is…” He flicked a finger toward the note.

She shrugged. “Then you won’t have a problem giving us your al

ibis for the times of their murders.”

“None at all.”