Only Rage (A Sadie Price FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 2)

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWO

Her father slammed the door shut so loudly that Special Agent Sadie Price visibly flinched against the noise.

Sadie had been expecting this reaction. It was one of the many reasons that she had been determined, on her arrival back in Alaska, that she would do her best to ensure that her path never crossed her father’s. Sadie expected nothing else but rejection from the old man. The mean old bastard had been rejecting her for her whole life.

Sadie hadn’t come here for a heartfelt family reunion. She had come here to get some answers about her sister’s death. Her sister’s murder.

But it was more than just her bitter disappointment about not getting answers that made her eyes sting with sudden tears. She wiped them away furiously with the back of a gloved hand, telling herself that it was just the cold making her eyes water, nothing more.

Snow fell softly around her. The storm had let up, but the radio had promised it was a brief reprieve. Sadie pushed her scarf down and inhaled deeply, feeling the subzero air threatening to freeze her lungs, but almost welcoming the stab of pain. It was nothing compared to the stabbing in her heart. Why had she ever thought that he wouldn’t be able to get to her anymore?

It was nearly Christmas but there was no sign of lights or decorations at her father’s cabin. He was a recluse these days, she had heard: a lonely, bitter old alcoholic. His wife dead of cancer, his favorite daughter murdered, and his other daughter estranged. No chance of happy families here. Sadie and her father were estranged for good reason.

She could remember other Christmases, when she had prayed for her father to ignore her just as hard as she had prayed for him to love her.

*

“Dad. Don’t! She didn’t mean it,” Jessica pleaded as their father rounded on Sadie, his shotgun in his hand as he grabbed it from above the fireplace. It wouldn’t be the first time that he had trained it on her, to scare her or try and subdue her into submission. The first time, Sadie had still been in junior high, and she had wet herself as her father turned it on her, just inches from her face.

That had been just a few weeks after Mom had died.

“He doesn’t mean it,” Jessica had whispered to her that night as she had cuddled a sobbing Sadie to sleep in the dark of their bedroom, torn between loyalty to her father and her younger sister. Just a child, Sadie had known even back then that it was a lie. He did mean it. She had no doubt that if her father could have gotten away with it, then he would have pulled the trigger on his youngest daughter. The one that he had never wanted, as he often took great pleasure in reminding her.

She was surprised that he hadn’t done it already. Suddenly, thirteen-year-old Sadie didn’t care anymore.

“What I said is true,” she said, her angry eyes fixed on her father. “Mom would have left you if she had lived, and you know it. She hated you just like I do. You make us all miserable.”

“Sadie, stop,” Jessica pleaded. As their father stepped forward, the g*n in his hand lined up perfectly with the center of her forehead, Sadie wondered if he was finally going to do it. The hatred in his eyes was palpable.

Then Jessica stepped between them. “Please, Dad,” she said softly. “It’s Christmas.”

His eyes went from one sister to the other, and slowly, he put the g*n down. He wouldn’t hurt Jessica. Then he grabbed for his coat and made his way to the door without saying a word to either of them. Before he left, he kicked the forlorn little branch of pine that they had decorated and stuck in a pot, in lieu of a proper tree. The small presents that Jessica had bought with her meager wages from her Saturday job at the hardware store had gone, sold by their father for more booze money. It had been the heartbroken look on Jessica’s face that had prompted the argument between Sadie and her dad.

They both let out a sigh of relief as the door slammed shut behind him. This time of year, he could be gone for a few days.

“I managed to get hold of some chicken bones to make stock,” Jessica said. “So, we can have broth and potatoes. And I got party hats. It will be just like a proper Christmas dinner,” she said desperately, trying to salvage some festivity. Sadie nodded.

“Yeah, it will,” she said, forcing a smile. She watched Jessica go into the tiny kitchen.

“Merry Christmas,” Sadie said to no one in particular.

*

Sadie forced the memory away and set her shoulders back as she prepared to knock on the door again. She wasn’t thirteen anymore and had stopped being scared of her father long before she had left town to go to college. Until a few days ago, she hadn’t been back since. Apart from the occasional birthday card, which he had never reciprocated, there had been no contact. She had always been happy for it to stay that way.

But things had changed. Her father had stage four cancer, for one. On its own though, Sadie wasn’t sure that would have been reason enough to get her outside his door. Instead, it had been the words of a different dying man.

What happened to my sister?

Ask your father.

Implying that he knew something, after all these years, and had never said a word. That he had done it? She couldn’t, wouldn’t believe that, but in the dead of night with nothing else to distract her, it had always been the possibility that played on her mind. Her father had loved Jessica – at least, as much as he was capable of loving anyone, but he hadn’t been above raising his hand even to his favorite daughter.

Sadie had always suspected that her father was secretly relieved when the case had been dropped. Her sister’s body, bloated and frozen from being trapped under the frozen lakes, hadn’t yielded any clues as to how it had gotten there. Without any other evidence, it had been ruled inconclusive. Case closed.

Sadie had known better. Her sister had been murdered. And now she had been told that the person who could answer her questions was none other than their less than doting father.

She would drag the answers out of him if she had to. Jessica’s murder had haunted her for years and it was one of the reasons that she had returned to Alaska. Unfinished business. Because, although Jessica’s death had been investigated after her body had turned up following her mysterious disappearance, no conclusions had been made. It could have been an accident. It could even, God forbid, have been a suicide. Or so the locals had whispered, not looking Sadie or her father in the eye. Ice both bloated and preserved bodies, making both exact time and cause of death impossible. The case had been dropped.

Sadie had known, deep in her gut, that someone had killed Jessica; but who wanted to listen to a wayward fifteen-year-old with a chip on her shoulder?

She was a hotshot BAU agent now, renowned for having caught some of the nation’s most sinister killers. If there was anything to find out about her sister’s death, she would find it, and this time people would have to listen to her.

There were other reasons for leaving Washington, D.C., as well, but she wasn’t going to think about them right now. One past trauma at a time, she thought wryly.

Sadie was about to bang on the door again and let her father know that she wasn’t going anywhere until he answered it and answered her, when she heard her radio crackle.

It was Sheriff Cooper, who was just a few hundred yards back on the track and waiting for her in the snowplow along with Deputy Jane Cooper, his sister.

“I’m sorry Price, but I need you to get back here,” he said. There was a tone to his voice that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up in both fear and anticipation. It was a tone that she had heard too many times over her career not to recognize.

Something had happened.

“What is it?”

“A body has been found down at the harbor, in a fisherman’s hold. It doesn’t look good. We need to go and check it out,” Cooper sounded apologetic, but urgent.

“I’ll be right there,” she told him.

Sadie turned and made her way back to the snowplow without glancing back at her father’s cabin.

She would be back. But right now, it looked as though she had another, more recent murder on her hands.