It's Never too Late

PROFESSOR CHRISTINE EVANS was deceased.

Standing at her kitchen table, Addy stared at the woman’s file on the secure Montford server accessible only by Will and one or two other people. No one could legitimately accuse Will, or Montford, of poor record keeping. A scan of Christine’s death certificate was in the woman’s file.

Cause of death was a fatal blow due to a car accident.

But the shocking part was that she’d died before she taught that semester at Montford.

Scrolling back to the first page of the file, Addy read again, checked dates. And then brought up the chart depicting a historical account of professorial ratings at Montford. She double-checked the dates of Christine’s student ratings and her performance reviews.

She was right.

The woman had been dead before she taught a course at the college.

Which meant that someone had tampered with the records.

Addy was onto something. And the something wouldn’t be good if it meant that someone Will trusted enough to have access to the secured database was altering records.

With her finger on the page down key, she quickly flipped through the pages she’d read and then slowed when she came to the parts of Christine’s employment file that she hadn’t seen.

A newspaper article written by a local reporter, dated January 2001. Just a few weeks after Christine’s one semester at Montford had ended.

Dead Sister Saves Lives

Addy read every word of the story. Two sisters, traveling together. An accident. One dies, the other lives...and the attending physician mixes up their identities.

She read it again. And then, hands on the keyboard, typed quickly. Furiously searching for more. With her memberships to online sources, she accessed local public records. Legal and criminal records from the county courthouse. Montford databases.

She looked at marriage licenses. And found adoption papers, too.

And wondered if Greg Richards knew what she’d just learned. If that was why he had her looking into Will Parsons’s activities. Was it possible the sheriff was using her to find out what a prosecutor might uncover if Will Parsons was brought up on the charges that were alleged in the anonymous letter he’d received?

Were they both using her? Because they knew there was something to find?

Feeling sick to her stomach, she stumbled outside, fell into the cheap lounge chair on the tiny patio and sat listening to the tinkling of water in her fountain.

Just listening. Focusing on the water. Searching for peace.

Will Parsons was a good man.

He would not lie to her.

CHAPTER NINE

NONNIE WAS IN BED ASLEEP, her chair parked beside the lowered double mattress in her room that allowed her to slide easily from bed to chair without assistance, when Mark got home shortly after eight that evening.

It felt good to put in a full day of work again. Good to be providing. And he felt guilty as hell that Nonnie was spending so much time alone. She’d put him in an impossible position with this move of hers. He couldn’t not work. His scholarship-allotted living expenses would not cover Nonnie’s disposable undergarments. Or the heat therapy bands that eased her pain. They wouldn’t pay for her vitamin supplement drinks or, God forbid, any emergency that might arise.

Closing her bedroom door—because she insisted on maintaining her individual privacy as a condition of continuing to live with him—Mark showered, pulled on a fresh pair of jeans and a sleeveless undershirt and helped himself to a beer from the refrigerator. As he sat at the kitchen table, nursing his beer, he looked through the small window over the sink into the equally small backyard, and wondered how the boys back home were doing. Pretty much every member of his crew had texted him at least once in the week and a half he’d been gone.

He missed them.

Missed knowing everyone in town and everyone in town knowing him. He missed the acre of land that greeted him when he looked out his back window at home.

There was movement out there. Slight, but there, just the same. Giving his eyes a chance to adjust to the darkness outside, Mark watched the far corner of his neighbor’s patio.

And was rewarded by the sight of her. Sitting in the dark all alone.

Was she reliving the horror from the night before? What had happened to trigger her nightmare? Especially after so many years?