If She Heard

Blake Pierce is the USA Today bestselling author of the RILEY PAGE mystery series, which includes seventeen books. Blake Pierce is also the author of the MACKENZIE WHITE mystery series, comprising thirteen books (and counting); of the AVERY BLACK mystery series, comprising six books; of the KERI LOCKE mystery series, comprising five books; of the MAKING OF RILEY PAIGE mystery series, comprising six books; of the KATE WISE mystery series, comprising seven books; of the CHLOE FINE psychological suspense mystery, comprising six books; of the JESSE HUNT psychological suspense thriller series, comprising seven books (and counting); of the AU PAIR psychological suspense thriller series, comprising two books (and counting); of the ZOE PRIME mystery series, comprising three books (and counting); and of the new ADELE SHARP mystery series.

An avid reader and lifelong fan of the mystery and thriller genres, Blake loves to hear from you, so please feel free to visit www.blakepierceauthor.com to learn more and stay in touch.

Copyright © 2020 by Blake Pierce. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Jacket image Copyright  Lukiyanova andreiuc88, used under license from Shutterstock.com.

ADELE SHARP MYSTERY SERIES

LEFT TO DIE (Book #1)

LEFT TO RUN (Book #2)

LEFT TO HIDE (Book #3)

THE AU PAIR SERIES

ALMOST GONE (Book#1)

ALMOST LOST (Book #2)

ALMOST DEAD (Book #3)

ZOE PRIME MYSTERY SERIES

FACE OF DEATH (Book#1)

FACE OF MURDER (Book #2)

FACE OF FEAR (Book #3)

FACE OF MADNESS (Book #4)

A JESSIE HUNT PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE SERIES

THE PERFECT WIFE (Book #1)

THE PERFECT BLOCK (Book #2)

THE PERFECT HOUSE (Book #3)

THE PERFECT SMILE (Book #4)

THE PERFECT LIE (Book #5)

THE PERFECT LOOK (Book #6)

THE PERFECT AFFAIR (Book #7)

CHLOE FINE PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE SERIES

NEXT DOOR (Book #1)

A NEIGHBOR’S LIE (Book #2)

CUL DE SAC (Book #3)

SILENT NEIGHBOR (Book #4)

HOMECOMING (Book #5)

TINTED WINDOWS (Book #6)

KATE WISE MYSTERY SERIES

IF SHE KNEW (Book #1)

IF SHE SAW (Book #2)

IF SHE RAN (Book #3)

IF SHE HID (Book #4)

IF SHE FLED (Book #5)

IF SHE FEARED (Book #6)

IF SHE HEARD (Book #7)

THE MAKING OF RILEY PAIGE SERIES

WATCHING (Book #1)

WAITING (Book #2)

LURING (Book #3)

TAKING (Book #4)

STALKING (Book #5)

KILLING (Book #6)

RILEY PAIGE MYSTERY SERIES

ONCE GONE (Book #1)

ONCE TAKEN (Book #2)

ONCE CRAVED (Book #3)

ONCE LURED (Book #4)

ONCE HUNTED (Book #5)

ONCE PINED (Book #6)

ONCE FORSAKEN (Book #7)

ONCE COLD (Book #8)

ONCE STALKED (Book #9)

ONCE LOST (Book #10)

ONCE BURIED (Book #11)

ONCE BOUND (Book #12)

ONCE TRAPPED (Book #13)

ONCE DORMANT (Book #14)

ONCE SHUNNED (Book #15)

ONCE MISSED (Book #16)

ONCE CHOSEN (Book #17)

MACKENZIE WHITE MYSTERY SERIES

BEFORE HE KILLS (Book #1)

BEFORE HE SEES (Book #2)

BEFORE HE COVETS (Book #3)

BEFORE HE TAKES (Book #4)

BEFORE HE NEEDS (Book #5)

BEFORE HE FEELS (Book #6)

BEFORE HE SINS (Book #7)

BEFORE HE HUNTS (Book #8)

BEFORE HE PREYS (Book #9)

BEFORE HE LONGS (Book #10)

BEFORE HE LAPSES (Book #11)

BEFORE HE ENVIES (Book #12)

BEFORE HE STALKS (Book #13)

BEFORE HE HARMS (Book #14)

AVERY BLACK MYSTERY SERIES

CAUSE TO KILL (Book #1)

CAUSE TO RUN (Book #2)

CAUSE TO HIDE (Book #3)

CAUSE TO FEAR (Book #4)

CAUSE TO SAVE (Book #5)

CAUSE TO DREAD (Book #6)

KERI LOCKE MYSTERY SERIES

A TRACE OF DEATH (Book #1)

A TRACE OF MURDER (Book #2)

A TRACE OF VICE (Book #3)

A TRACE OF CRIME (Book #4)

A TRACE OF HOPE (Book #5)

CHAPTER ONE

Even before the baby arrived, people were calling Kate Wise the Miracle Mother. Upon learning that she was going to be giving birth at the age of fifty-seven, Kate had told no one other than Allen and Melissa. She hadn’t even told anyone at work. Not DeMarco, not Duran…no one. But somehow, word had gotten out. By the time she was five months pregnant, everyone at the bureau knew about it and there were journalists and reporters calling.

Oddly enough, the first journalist who had called her was on her mind as the doctor checked to see how much she was dilated. She’d found the idea of her pregnancy being newsworthy a little ridiculous. But as her doctors had told her and as some Google research had verified, it was rare for a woman beyond fifty to get pregnant—and even more rare for that woman to carry the baby to full term.

But here she was, her water having broken eight hours ago, with her doctor telling her she was eight centimeters dilated and it was almost time.

The first reporter had been a woman from Mother and Baby magazine. Kate had only taken the call out of a need to not be rude. They’d spoken on the phone twice; the second call ended up being more focused on her ability to maintain a second career within the FBI. The reporter had spoken to her as if Kate were some sort of superhero. Kate had never known why, but something about the interview had sat wrong with her for the entirety of her pregnancy.

Because no one should look to me as an example, Kate thought as another contraction went tearing through her more-than-half-a-century-old body. This is torture.

She did not remember her pregnancy with Melissa being this hard. Of course, that had been almost thirty years ago. That had been planned, and there had been no reporters. There had been no thirty-second blips on the evening news about her pregnancy, no nicknames like Miracle Mother to live up to.

“Kate?” the doctor said. His voice tore her out of her thoughts, managing to find a way in through the pain of the latest contraction. “You still with me?”

“Uh-huh.”

It was true, though the world was something of a haze. The pregnancy was high risk. There had been issues from the fourth month on. Worries of low birth weight, a scare where the baby’s heartbeat had been far too slow, and now here he was, three weeks early and projected to weigh about a pound and a half under what the doctor considered safe.

“He’s here, Kate. I need you to push, okay? One more big push and your baby boy will

be—”

Kate pushed, and the room spun. She was vaguely aware of Allen by her side. He was holding her hand, his face next to hers as he coached her on and encouraged her. Kate let out a moan, doing everything she could not to scream. The world started growing dim just as she heard the first cries of her newborn baby son.

Her vision was hazy at best when the doctor placed her son on her chest. She cradled him in her arms and started to cry. She hated the word miracle, as it was tossed around far too often. But feeling the warmth of her baby in her arms, held against her nearly sixty-year-old body, she supposed that’s what this was…a miracle.

It was a nice thought to hang on to as exhaustion swept over her and her vision went from hazy to a complete and perfect field of black.

In the coming weeks, Kate was overcome with a huge wave of depression. Now that her son was here—named Michael, after her late husband—she started to obsess over the negatives of being a new mother at the age of fifty-seven. First of all, she had to accept the fact that in the past eighteen months, she had become both a grandmother and a new mother. There was also the fact that by the time this new kid was old enough to go to college, she’d be pushing eighty. And thinking of college opened her eyes to the added expense. She had enough money saved up, but she had made plans for it—namely a lot of traveling after sixty. But now those plans would have to change.

She also wondered how Allen was going to truly handle it all. Sure, he had been great so far. He had been genuinely excited through most of the pregnancy, but now the baby was actually here and changing their lives…especially Allen’s. First of all, Michael had stayed in the hospital for three weeks. He’d been in NICU while a team of doctors made sure he was going to gain weight. Kate missed most of this, as her own recovery was much harder than she’d expected. The strain of the birth had thrown her back out and her femoral nerves had also been damaged, causing her to occasionally lose feeling in her legs. She was finally officially released from the hospital after eleven days.

Twenty days after he was born, Michael was allowed to go home. He weighed five pounds seven ounces when Kate rested him in his bassinet for the first time. For the two days that followed, Kate had been an almost obsessive mother. She’d make sure he was breathing at least five times during each of his naps and at night; she hovered over Allen when he held their son, and she would not even let Melissa hold him.

Those two days had worn her out and that, she supposed, was what brought the depression on. She stayed in bed for eight full days, only getting up to use the bathroom and to shower on three occasions. Allen was essentially a single parent in that time, and during one of her nights of being holed up in her bed, Kate heard him sobbing.

On that eighth day, it was Melissa of all people who convinced her to get out of bed. There was a knock at the bedroom door. She assumed it was Allen and answered with a groggy “Come in.”

When she saw that it was Melissa, she wanted to cry but wasn’t sure why. She propped herself up on her left elbow, surprised at how much it hurt to do so. Staying in bed had made her quite sore.

“Lissa,” she said. “What a surprise.”

Melissa sat on the edge of the bed and took her mother’s hand. “How you doing, Mom?”

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “Tired. Wiped out. Depressed.”

“Still having issues with your legs?”

“No, they seem okay. Haven’t lost feeling in them since I got back home.”

“Good. Knowing your legs are okay is going to make me seem like less of a bully with what I say next.”

“What is it?” Kate asked.

“I love you, Mom. But it’s time to get your ass out of bed.”

“I want to, I really do. But I—”

“No, Mom. Allen has been busting his ass this past week. I’ve helped where I can, but he only lets me do so much because he’s afraid of how you’ll react. Look…I get how weird and scary this has to be, but you need to face it. You’re fifty-seven and you just had a baby. And you survived it. Now it’s time to be a mother. And I can tell you from personal experience that you’re pretty good at it.”

Kate sat up and looked sternly at her daughter. “Allen…is he okay?”

“No. He’s exhausted and he’s afraid you’re in some bad place you won’t come back from. But I told him to get that right out of his head. You’re a rock star. He told me how you pushed through that pregnancy. And I’ve watched you reclaim a career as a female FBI agent even after you retired. You handled that…so you can handle this. More importantly, you were excited to start your career again at fifty-five. So now it’s time to be excited for this baby at fifty-seven.”

Kate nodded, and when the tears started to come, she did not fight them.

“There’s just one thing I need to let you know,” Melissa said.

“What’s that?”

“If you need me to tell you how babies are made, I can do it. Seems to me at this age, you’d know how to be safe.”

Kate burst out laughing. It hurt her sides, her stomach, and her head, but it also felt good at the same time. Melissa laughed right along with her, taking Kate’s hand again. “I mean, for real. My daughter is older than her own uncle. How the hell does that even work?”

Kate laughed even louder and leaned into her daughter. They embraced and stayed that way for so long that after a while, Kate could not tell where the laughter stopped and the crying began.

Slowly, Melissa helped Kate out of bed. She coached her through getting in the shower and even put on a pot of tea while her mother washed off. Taking a shower, as simple as it was, helped to bring Kate around a lot. But, to her amazement, it was also exhausting. She felt like an invalid as she struggled to put her clothes on.

As she fought to get her arms into a T-shirt, Melissa came into the room and helped. “I don’t know that I’ve ever helped you into your clothes,” Melissa said. “Good thing I’ve had Michelle to practice on. I bet she never would have thought her grandmother would need help getting dressed.”

“Were you always such a smart ass?” Kate asked.

“Always.”

Together, they left the bedroom and walked into the living room. Kate looked around, amazed at how clean and quiet the place was. “Where’s Allen and Michael?” she asked.

Allen took him out for a walk around the block. He’s done it twice a day for the last three days.”

“God, have I been that out?”

“You have.” Melissa took the kettle off of the stove and poured hot water into waiting cups with tea bags in them. “Mom…are you going to be able to do this?”

“I think so. Eventually. It’s just overwhelming. And it took way too much out of me.”

“I thought I was going to die when I had Michelle. I can’t imagine giving birth at your age.” She smirked here and added: “You old fart.”

“You know,” Kate said, “somehow, it became much easier to be apart from you over the years.”

This time it was Melissa who broke out laughing. It was like music to Kate. It warmed her heart in a way that she had missed. Sadly, she realized that she could not remember the last time she’d heard Melissa laugh so hard.

It made her wonder what else she had missed and taken for granted.

Director Duran kept his distance in the months that followed. He sent a card and a care package of diapers and wipes a week after Michael’s birth, but refrained from any emails or phone calls. Kate appreciated the gesture but started to feel a creeping sort of certainty about her future with the bureau. Having a baby at the age of fifty-seven and becoming something of a local celebrity for it likely meant her brief resurgence at work was now over.

On the other hand, she couldn’t help but wonder if the bureau might enjoy some of the free press. Not only free press, but uplifting and uncontroversial press for once.

She wished she could be fine with it, but she wasn’t. She grew to love Michael more and more every day. There had been a few days where she had resented him, but it did not last long. After all, Melissa’s speech had been accurate. Had she and Allen been more careful, she would not have gotten pregnant. Then again, the idea of being careful sexually when you were fifty-five tended to look different than it did for other dating adults.

Three months after she had been coaxed out of bed by Melissa, Kate was able to see this last stretch of her life for what it was. It would be a life of domestication and learning how to be a mother again. It would be learning how to love and trust a man with not only her life, but the life of their child.

Ultimately, she was fine with it. Hell, she was sure there were some grandmothers who would do anything to experience that feeling of being a new mother again. And here she was, with that chance.

Allen seemed fine with it as well. They had not yet talked about what the rest of their lives would look like in terms of marriage and co-parenting. He was still loving her well and seemed absolutely nuts about little Michael, but he seemed timid a lot of the time. It was like he was running underneath a cliff, waiting to be brained by a boulder that was sure to fall on him at any moment.

She wasn’t sure what was bothering him until her phone rang on a Wednesday afternoon. Kate was sitting on the couch with Michael. Allen picked the phone up from the kitchen counter and brought it to her. He wasn’t necessarily spying when he looked down to see the display; it was just something they did now, a level of comfort she had been totally fine with.

Yet when he handed the phone to her, he had a sour expression on his face. She took the phone, he took Michael from her, and she looked to the display as she answered the call.

It was Duran.

Kate and Allen locked eyes for a moment and she understood his strain.

Her heart racing, Kate answered the call.

Allen walked into the kitchen; the shadow of that falling boulder may as well have been growing larger and larger, covering him completely.

CHAPTER TWO

Sandra Peterson woke up fifteen minutes before her alarm was set to go off. She had been waking up to that same alarm, at 6:30 every morning, for the last two years or so. She’d always been a good sleeper, managing seven to nine hours every night and never waking before the alarm. But this morning, she was stirred awake by excitement. Kayla was home from college and they were going to spend the entire day together.

It would be the first time they’d spent more than half a day together since Kayla started college last year. She was home because one of her childhood friends was getting married. Kayla had been raised in Harper Hills, North Carolina, a small rural town about twenty miles outside of Charlotte, and had opted to enroll in an out-of-state college as early as she could. Going to school at Florida State meant their times together were few and far between. They’d last seen each other at Christmas, and that had been almost a year ago for only a period of ten hours before Kayla had left to visit her father in Tennessee.

Kayla had always handled the divorce well. Sandra and her husband had split when Kayla was eleven and she never really even seemed to care. Sandra supposed it was one of the reasons Kayla had never played favorites. When she visited one parent, she made a point to visit the other. And because of that torturous trip—from Tallahassee, to Harper Hills, to Nashville—Kayla didn’t visit very often.

Sandra shuffled out of the bedroom in her pajamas and bedroom slippers. She walked down the hallway toward the kitchen, passing by Kayla’s room. She didn’t expect her daughter to wake up any time before eight, and that was fine. Sandra figured she could put some coffee on and prepare a nice breakfast for when she was awake.

She did just that, scrambling up some eggs, frying some bacon, and making a dozen silver dollar pancakes. The kitchen was smelling amazing by seven o’clock, and Sandra was surprised the smells hadn’t stirred Kayla awake yet. It had worked when Kayla had been at home, especially when the high school years had come about. But now the smells of her home cooking apparently did not have the same effect on her daughter.

Anyway, Kayla had been out with friends last night—some friends she hadn’t seen since high school graduation. Sandra hadn’t felt right sticking with her daughter’s old curfew now that she was in college, so Sandra had simply left it at: Come home in one piece and preferably sober.

As the morning crept on toward eight and Kayla had still not come out of her room, Sandra started to worry. Rather than knock on the bedroom door and potentially wake her up, though, Sandra looked out the living room window. She saw Kayla’s car in the driveway, parked right behind her own car.

Relieved, Sandra went back to making breakfast. When all of the food was ready, it was 7:55. Sandra hated to wake her daughter (she was sure it would be seen as rude and uncool), but she simply couldn’t help it. Maybe after breakfast, Kayla would take a nap and rest up before they started their day of shopping and a late lunch in Charlotte. Besides…the eggs were going to get cold and Kayla had always made a point to mention how gross cold eggs were.

Sandra walked down the hall to Kayla’s room. It felt surreal and comforting at the same time. How many times had she knocked on this door in her adult life? Thousands, for sure. To be doing it again made her heart warm.

She knocked, paused a moment, and then added a sweet-sounding: “Kayla, honey? Breakfast is ready.”

There was no response from inside. Sandra frowned. She was not naïve enough to think that Kayla and her friends had not been drinking last night. She had never seen her daughter drunk or enduring a hangover and did not want to see it at all if she could help it. She wondered if Kayla was simply hungover and not ready to face her mother.

“There’s coffee,” Sandra added, hoping it might help.

Still no response. She knocked one more time, louder this time, and opened the door.

The bed was still perfectly made. There was no sign of Kayla.

But that makes no sense, Sandra thought. Her car is out front.

She then recalled a particularly ungraceful moment from her own teenage years where she had driven home drunk out of her mind. She’d managed to make it home but had passed out in her car, in the driveway. She found it hard to imagine Kayla behaving in such a way but there were only so many other possibilities to consider.

As Sandra closed Kayla’s bedroom door and walked back through the kitchen, a little ball of worry bounced around in her stomach. Maybe Kayla had been hiding some drinking or drug problems from her. Maybe they’d spend their day talking through such things rather than their planned day of fun.

Sandra steeled up her courage to have such a conversation as she opened the front door. Just as she stepped out onto the porch, she froze. Her left leg literally paused in the air, refusing to set down.

Because if she set her foot down, she was stepping into a new world—a world where what she saw on her front porch was going to have to be faced and accepted.

Kayla was lying on the porch. She was on her back and staring up with unblinking eyes. There were red abrasions around her throat. She was not moving.

Sandra finally brought that other foot down. When she did, the rest of her body followed it. She fell into a crumpled ball by her dead daughter, thoughts of breakfast and shopping completely forgotten.

CHAPTER THREE

It never got any easier to step into a meeting with Director Duran. He had always been fair with Kate and she even considered him a good friend. But the nature of the call and the way the last few months of her life had gone made Kate think that this was going to be a tense meeting—perhaps a meeting that would put an end to her briefly resurrected career as an FBI agent.

When she stepped into his office, he greeted her with the no-nonsense smile she had come to know and appreciate ever since he had taken over for the director who had overseen the first half of her career. She and Duran were roughly the same age (she had never bothered to ask how old he was because it seemed rude) and had a mutual appreciation for one another.

“Hey, Kate, have a seat.”

She was immediately alarmed that he had used her first name. It was very informal, something he had only ever done in after-hours situations or when conversations had gotten heated.

“Kate, huh?” she asked. She was beyond the point of being nervous around him. She made the comment in jest, as if basically painting the situation for what it was and placing it neatly on the desk between them.