Saved From Suicide, Sold Into a Lie novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Hold Room

Four thousand dollars a month, and Joanna had said it like she was reading a bill.

Security was already walking us toward a windowless room behind the check-in desks, and I kept my eyes on her back.

"What did you mean about Leanne?" I said.

"Ask her yourself," Joanna said over her shoulder. "She took Dorian's money every month for five years."

"That's a lie."

"Then why does she have a bank account full of it?"

I had no answer, and I hated that I had none.

Hank shook his head at me, and I shut my mouth.

There was a steel table in the room, six chairs, and a camera in the corner.

The six o'clock flight left without them.

A tall officer with a tablet asked Joanna for her passport.

She handed it over without a word.

He typed for a long time.

Then he looked up at her and then at me, and then he turned the screen toward a second officer.

"That badge number Mr. Ledford gave out in the hall," the second officer said. "It's in the system. It says deceased."

Nobody in the room spoke.

Joanna sat with the boy asleep on her lap again, one hand on his back.

"Detective Brightman," the tall officer said. "Is that you?"

"It's complicated," she said.

"I'm sure it is," he said, and wrote something down.

He stepped out to call a supervisor.

When the door shut, I put my hands flat on the table.

"Tell me why."

Joanna looked at the boy's hair, not at me.

"You want it plain?"

"I want it plain."

"I couldn't do the job anymore," she said. "Eleven cases in a row ended with a child in a bag. I was sleeping three hours a night. I started carrying my gun to the bathroom."

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