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Back Minutes to Kill Save as PDF
Chapters (45)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Contents
  5. Chapter One
  6. Chapter Two
  7. Chapter Three
  8. Chapter Four
  9. Chapter Five
  10. Chapter Six
  11. Chapter Seven
  12. Chapter Eight
  13. Chapter Nine
  14. Chapter Ten
  15. Chapter Eleven
  16. Chapter Twelve
  17. Chapter Thirteen
  18. Chapter Fourteen
  19. Chapter Fifteen
  20. Chapter Sixteen
  21. Chapter Seventeen
  22. Chapter Eighteen
  23. Chapter Nineteen
  24. Chapter Twenty
  25. Chapter Twenty-One
  26. Chapter Twenty-Two
  27. Chapter Twenty-Three
  28. Chapter Twenty-Four
  29. Chapter Twenty-Five
  30. Chapter Twenty-Six
  31. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  32. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  33. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  34. Chapter Thirty
  35. Chapter Thirty-One
  36. Chapter Thirty-Two
  37. Chapter Thirty-Three
  38. Chapter Thirty-Four
  39. Chapter Thirty-Five
  40. Chapter Thirty-Six
  41. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  42. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  43. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  44. Acknowledgments
  45. About the Author

Hannah wanted to assure him that the dead woman wasn’t his daughter, but who was she to say? Hope was a balancing act. Too little left a person unable to hang on. Too much made bad news unable to bear. She had a clear memory of her father telling her that her mother would be fine. That everything was going to be all right. She could beat the cancer. He believed it in every corner of his soul. In turn, Hannah had believed him, even though the doubt in the oncologist’s eyes told her otherwise. “I wish I could tell you to have faith, but it feels like empty advice. I tend to expect the worst.”

“Then we have something in common.” Chet rubbed his eyes, put on his glasses, and turned to face the computer. The monitor had illuminated. Icons lined up in neat rows on an enlarged photo of his daughter at a much younger age, maybe five or six, with a smile that didn’t indicate the devastating mental illness that was to come. “Now let’s see if we can do something to help somebody. I’m starting to feel useless.”

“Where do we start?” she asked.

“Did you bring the composite sketches?”

Hannah pulled the drawings from the manila envelope and handed them to Chet.

“Brody called the cop in Vegas and got him to send the fingerprints they lifted from the rental car.” Chet opened an e-mail. “We have three sets of possible fingerprints, we have a name, which may or may not be the girl’s real name, and a rough idea of what she looks like.”

“That doesn’t seem like much.”

“It isn’t, but what we do have is time. I happen to have scads of that to kill, so there’s no harm in trying.” Chet looked at her over the rims of his glasses. “You have anything better to do?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

“Now we have two things in common.” Chet pulled a stack of index cards from his drawer. “Let’s start with a timeline.” He dated the first card. “Tell me what happened.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Three

Brody stepped out of the courtroom, pulled out his cell phone, and turned it on. He scrolled through his messages and paused on one from Vinnie Schooler, a forensic investigator with the CSI division. Nodding hello to a passing assistant prosecutor, he walked to the end of the corridor and returned Vinnie’s call.

“Hey, Brody. I got something for you on your Jane Doe case.”

“Something good?”

“I think so.”

Brody pivoted and strode for the exit. “I’m just leaving the courthouse. I’ll stop by in three minutes.”