Page 203 of The Woman Left Behind

Harry tried, but he couldn’t read if she had a problem with what she had to do.

She seemed to be…just Karen.

“You’d take a hit so she had answers, Harry,” she stated. “I know you.”

“Karen—”

“I’ll do the downtime. I’ll do the counseling. But I can already tell you, I won’t lose sleep for taking him out.”

Harry regarded her thoroughly.

“It isn’t what he did to women,” she continued. “It wasn’t all the shit he did. I wasn’t playing judge and executioner. The reason why you couldn’t be involved is the reason why you didn’t take that shot. You wanted answers for Lillian, and you’d do anything to get them for her. You wanted him alive. I wasn’t about to let you get dead so she’d know all that happened to her parents. In the end, those answers don’t matter. What matters is, she knows who took them away, and he’s paid. And what matters even more is, you’re going home to her right now.”

Suddenly, he was reminded of the conversation he’d had with Megan.

“I’m running unopposed,” he told her something she knew.

“I know,” she confirmed she knew.

“Fresh perspectives after this term, Karen,” he stated. “If one of my investigators becomes sheriff, there’ll be an opening for an investigator, so I can go back to doing that.”

Her eyes widened in shock.

Harry walked the two steps to her and stopped.

“To do this job, you have to make tough decisions every day, carry them through, and be able to live with them,” he said. “Rus has had enough stress in his life, he won’t run. Think about it.”

With that, he cuffed her on the arm.

And then he walked out of his office to get home to Lillian.

FIFTY

The Rundown

Lillian

There was a lot to go over.

So here’s the rundown:

We’ll start with Willie.

Harry was right, he was going to see a lot of prison time in a lot of different prisons.

First, he was tried for so much stuff in Seattle, I lost track of all the charges (though, I did that because I wasn’t really keeping track in the first place).

Even though Rita got him a high-priced attorney, he was found guilty.

For all of it.

He was then extradited to Fret County, and the same thing happened.

After that, he was extradited to Vancouver, and yep, you guessed it, the same thing happened.

So he’d start in federal prison, and when he was done with his sentence there, he’d do time in a state prison, and after that, he’d head up to Canada.

By the time he finally served all of his sentences, even if he was granted early parole along the way, Willie would be in his fifties.

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