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Back When She Returned Save as PDF
Chapters (48)
  1. TITLE PAGE
  2. COPYRIGHT
  3. CONTENTS
  4. PROLOGUE
  5. ONE
  6. TWO
  7. THREE
  8. FOUR
  9. FIVE
  10. SIX
  11. SEVEN
  12. EIGHT
  13. NINE
  14. TEN
  15. ELEVEN
  16. TWELVE
  17. THIRTEEN
  18. FOURTEEN
  19. FIFTEEN
  20. SIXTEEN
  21. SEVENTEEN
  22. EIGHTEEN
  23. NINETEEN
  24. TWENTY
  25. TWENTY-ONE
  26. TWENTY-TWO
  27. TWENTY-THREE
  28. TWENTY-FOUR
  29. TWENTY-FIVE
  30. TWENTY-SIX
  31. TWENTY-SEVEN
  32. TWENTY-EIGHT
  33. TWENTY-NINE
  34. THIRTY
  35. THIRTY-ONE
  36. THIRTY-TWO
  37. THIRTY-THREE
  38. THIRTY-FOUR
  39. THIRTY-FIVE
  40. THIRTY-SIX
  41. THIRTY-SEVEN
  42. THIRTY-EIGHT
  43. THIRTY-NINE
  44. FORTY
  45. FORTY-ONE
  46. FORTY-TWO
  47. FORTY-THREE
  48. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

“Where will you go? How are you going to get there?” Dad was circling around her as she packed. He kept reaching out his arms like he wanted to stop her and then quickly pulling them back.

“I’ll find something,” she said. There was no fight left in her voice.

“At least let me give you some money,” Dad said. He turned to leave so he could go back downstairs to get his wallet and noticed me standing in the doorway with my bag slung over my shoulder. “Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded.

“I’m going with Mom.”

“Absolutely not,” he said, shaking his head.

“I’m not asking your permission.” I reached down and grabbed one of her bags lying on the floor. “Come on, Mom. Let’s go.”

THIRTY-NINE

THIRTY-NINE

MEREDITH

NOW

It’d been over two hours, and Scott still wasn’t back. He’d insisted on driving the girls to their hotel and checking them in, but it couldn’t have taken him this long. Not unless he’d driven them to another city, but there was no way he’d do that. He would never let Abbi stay so far away from him. I couldn’t believe he’d let her go with Kate. Her heart was set on it, but he should have put his foot down.

He was probably driving around trying to calm down. He might not be so upset if he’d watched the video, but he had refused to look at the screen even when I shoved my phone in his face. I’d gotten the idea to record her when Dean had mentioned something about the videos they’d reviewed earlier that day, and I had planned to analyze her phone calls in the same way they’d analyzed the footage of her mumbled pacing. I cared about what she was doing at night, even if nobody else did. The audio was terrible and the video fuzzy—nothing like the high-tech gear the FBI had used—but she had unmistakably been talking to someone.

I kept thinking Scott would change his mind about blindly trusting her if he saw it with his own eyes. He needed to see how Kate had sneaked downstairs twice to make sure I wasn’t following her before making her call. The second time she’d hidden behind the wall in the living room for over thirty minutes, staring at the foot of the stairs. There was no doubt that she had been waiting to see if I would come downstairs behind her. It wasn’t until she was convinced she hadn’t been followed that she had tiptoed into the kitchen and picked up the receiver. She had quickly punched in the number and had spoken with her hand cupping the receiver in hurried whispers for several minutes, her eyes never leaving the doorway to the kitchen.