A clatter erupted from the back of the kitchen. Allie shot to her feet, squeezed her eyes shut, and clamped her hands to her ears. Her head screamed with the memory of the gunshot, the odor of gunpowder, her brother falling to the floor.
After a few seconds, she opened her eyes to find that the noise had just been Big Joe hurrying through the mudroom door. “Shit!” she screamed. “Can you not do that?”
The big guy stopped in his tracks. “Do what?”
“Slam the door open like that!”
He frowned. “Well, I didn’t mean—” he started. Then his eyes seemed to grow hard. “Sorry.” He disappeared into the living room, his jug of green smoothie in hand.
“You okay?” Louis asked.
Allie nodded.
“Do loud noises frighten you?”
She shrugged, sweat cooling in the center of her back. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Well, I’m sorry it scared you. He didn’t mean anything by it, though. From what I know about him, the poor guy wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
Maybe not, but it still didn’t help the fact that he had just scared the crap out of her.
“Do you read much, Allie?”
“I used to,” she muttered, starting to calm down. “All the time with my broth—” She clamped her mouth shut.
Louis studied her, forcing her to look away. Lacing his fingers above his head, he sank back in his chair. “Were you going to say your ‘brother’?”
Allie jerked her head forward, letting her hair fall across the side of her face. It was her ugly side—and she’d just realized it was exposed. She nodded at Louis’s question, her eyes glued to the table.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about him. But if you ever do . . . and not just about him, but about anything . . . I want you to know you have a safe environment here. With Miss Bitty. With me. We’re both great listeners . . . and neither of us would ever judge you.”
The last time she’d talked about her past was with Johnny, and just a few days afterward, he left.
“Miss Bitty is like a celebrity around here, isn’t she?” Allie blurted. “So many people recognized her when we were at the mall.”
Louis grinned. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess she is. When you teach someone how to regain their health, people tend to hold you in high regard. And she’s helped a lot of people in the last year or so since she’s been here.”
He glanced at his watch. “Okay, let’s wrap things up. I need to leave for another appointment.”
He slid Allie’s assessment tests across the table so she could see them. “You did really well. You are seriously one smart cookie to do so well from such little schooling. I’m sure your interest in reading helped, too.”
Smart cookie?
Me?
He removed his glasses and ran a small cloth over the lenses. “From the way you tested today, it looks like we won’t have nearly as much work as we thought to get you prepared for that GED.”
Something in Allie’s belly fluttered. No one had ever called her smart before. It definitely had a different ring to it. An awesome one.
Smart cookie . . .
“Allie? You with me?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah.”
CHAPTER 22
THIRTY MINUTES AFTER Louis left, Allie was in the kitchen with her caseworker, Miss Bitty, the town’s sheriff, and a female FBI agent who had identified herself as Special Agent Denise Jones.
“Like I mentioned,” Agent Jones said, “my partner and I worked with Sheriff Hebert on your brother’s case last year.”
Allie stared past the woman’s kind eyes, at the window. A man was dragging the lawn mower out of the shed. It was one of the men she’d seen the day she arrived.
“Given the circumstances, I’m sure you are going through a very difficult time. And I’m really sorry. I couldn’t even imagine.”
Allie kept staring out the window. Since the sheriff and the agent had shown up, she was finding it difficult to breathe.
“And I know, Allie, that you’ve already spoken with the sheriff here, but I want to ask a few questions, too. Is that okay?”
Allie didn’t answer. She watched the man push the lawn mower in front of the window and stare in. She wondered if he could actually see them or if he was just looking at his own reflection.
After a moment, the agent continued. “Did you know Tiffany Perron and Sarah Greene? The girls who your brother killed?”
Allie’s leg began to shake under the table. She didn’t want to answer any questions about her brother. She didn’t want to be in the same room with the sheriff, breathing the same air he breathed.
“Allie?” her caseworker prompted.
“What?” she asked, trying not to sound nervous.
“Did you know Tiffany and Sarah?” the agent asked again.
“No. I didn’t know them.”
“Did you know if they were friends with your brother? Or if he knew them?”
She shook her head.
“Any idea why he would want to kill them?”
Allie felt nauseous. “No. Why do you keep asking me the same questions? These are the exact same questions he asked me the other night,” she said, gesturing to Sheriff Hebert. “I already answered them all.”
Allie glared at the sheriff. She hated him. She had since she was a little girl. She remembered his afternoon visits to her mother. And from the way he studiously avoided her eyes, she was pretty sure he remembered her, too.
“We just need a better understanding of what happened,” Agent Jones said gently.
“Well, I didn’t know anything. I had no idea.”
“No idea about . . . ?”
“Anything.”
She didn’t want to return to those horrible days again. Plus, she didn’t owe the sheriff a damn thing. He and his department disgusted her. There had been many times when he could’ve helped free her and her brother from that god-awful house they’d called home. But instead he turned a blind eye because he wanted to continue visiting her mother. He didn’t deserve Allie’s help. She wasn’t going to tell any of them shit.
“You do realize that we found several bodies on your family’s property.”
The hair rose on Allie’s arms. “So I hear.”
“I’m sorry?”
“At the hospital. The sheriff told me you found bodies.”
“And you had no knowledge of them beforehand?”