The Witness Quotes
"I never outgrew the preference to skip breakfast and catch the extra sleep."
"You have a good quiet life here, and I know better than you what it would mean if you got such a letter."
"Running isn’t so bad. I had three good years here before chance put me in the spotlight."
"Let’s hope it smoothes a few headaches for them."
"It’s important, Luke, the job you do. But this town needs you more than I do."
"I’ve thought about tapping the cash so I could better disappear, changing my name again and again, disappearing into Europe somewhere with the best security money could buy."
"It’s blood money. Call it an oversensitive conscience or the fact I believe in heaven and hell."
"I’ll admit I’m not feeling much yet. How much money? I think I’m ready for that shock now."
"You’ve built this as a place you love, and you’ll still love it a year from now."
"What I need, I have, and what I want, I enjoy dreaming about."
"I don’t think there will be enough Silver Security guys around the sisters, at least not in close enough, to be able to stop it."
"That’s what I think too. Forty-eight hours and we’ll have to tell the sisters why the security bubble has to stay tight and close."
"It’s not every day you announce to the world you’re the luckiest lady around."
"The money isn’t going to change his opinion about your sister, and I don’t think it changes your sister all that much either—I expect she’ll still finish that degree and then rejoin a medical practice here in town."
"I figure I can handle about any of it but Amy staying lost out there somewhere, dead."
"He could keep the two sisters alive if he surrounded them with enough security, but it was an open-ended problem."
"The tabloid reporters are getting aggressive."
"I’m taking Tracey out to dinner, and unless I’m mistaken Connor is hoping to take a slice of Marie’s time tonight."
"He was getting too old to deal with the lingering tension that came with waiting for something to happen."
"You’re not going to be able to prevent the trouble coming. The best you could likely do was be in place to stop it."
"You can’t drive your sisters into a life on the run too, and that’s what this is going to come down to unless it is finally stopped."
"I don’t want the dream anymore, Luke. It’s not worth the hurt."
"Get to work, Chief. This problem is covered."
"I can’t do my job when I’m wondering what is going through the head of the guy beside me and behind me."
"The money ought to be able to buy us the means to do at least that much."
"We’re family and we’re not going away this time."
"I worry about what this will do to Marie and Tracey when they know the truth."
"The world thinks I’m dead, and it has to stay that way."
"You know it’s only a matter of time before the headline reads ‘Oldest Sister Still Alive?’ and they repeat the rumor mill out of New York."
"You can’t stop a free press. If a newspaper reporter gets ambitious enough to run that story with rumors you are alive or goes to the lengths to see Richard Wise in prison, we’ll cope with it when it happens."
"I see a faxed list of people who visit Richard Wise every day; the cops in New York are providing whatever they hear on the streets."
"I didn’t see his face, just the jacket he wore and the center of his chest."
"And I’ll believe that when I think you don’t have solid reasons to lie to me about it."
"You were hit in that shooting; where did you go to seek medical treatment?"
"Enough to know I never want to be shot again. It healed."
"More cop dogs. I should be relieved, but I think I’m getting surrounded."
"I’ll let her show you around the house; it apparently struck her fancy when she saw it."
"The house is old, a farmhouse rebuilt over the years to incorporate central heating, a modern kitchen, and a spacious living room taking advantage of the original fireplace."
"The larger windows really brighten up the rooms."
"Family connections. They travel now they are retired and hate to have the place sit empty."
"Somewhere way in the past the owner of this place must have run moonshine on the side or else been part of the Underground Railroad, because he’s got the most elaborate network of storm cellars and storage drops on this property I’ve ever seen."
"How did you find this place?" Luke asked, looking back at Caroline.
"Do you know if Marsh has given Tracey the ring yet?"
"Go help Amy get her things; I’ll show her the bedrooms and then unload my own luggage."
"The anonymity of her life on the run had been a blessing, no one knowing the truth beyond the basic fabric she told them."
"I’m always weepy eyed these days. I don’t know why."
"Stress letting off. You’ve been wound pretty tight for a long time."
"It’s going to take some time getting used to sleeping with the sounds of this old house in the night when the wind comes."
"It’s brisk tonight." Amy could see her breath, and her warm leather gloves became stiffer in the cold air.
"Get going, Connor. I’d say you have a lady to see before she makes plans for her evening."
"Dating Marie … she wasn’t dating material; she was the marrying kind."
"The pad of paper and the pens were sitting there on the table waiting for the inspiration of what to write, but so far they were blank."
"Better," he thought, appreciating the difference.
"Sam, you were the one running background checks for Henry on the staff he hired. Was there anything at all in the background check of Philip Rich that suggested trouble?"
"The bookkeeper and the chauffeur have one thing in common; they both knew Henry Benton."
"If it’s not the fact he had two daughters, then what? Another affair? Henry is dead—he’s not going to care."
"But that kind of thing is a blackmail fax, not two murders. Why shut up two retired guys who apparently didn’t know they knew something?"
"Nothing like that was going down," Luke replied.
"‘Pay me to go away’—he’s hunting down a list of people who get him ever tighter and closer to Daniel and the sisters."
"Amy is the real target," Luke said with rising dread; trouble had come and found the lady he cared a great deal about.
"This doesn’t ever get easier, does it? Big picture or small, I’ve still got the same problem. Amy to protect, two murders to solve, and Richard Wise out there wanting to make trouble for this family until the day he gets what he wants."
"The harder I am to approach, the more my sisters become the easier targets."
"For a price loyalty is not that hard to achieve."
"Do you have a sense of where this man might stay in town, if he has arrived?"
"We’re talking to the neighbors for a third time tomorrow, hoping to get something new."
"The VIN numbers show the Lincoln is New York registered, and the plates have been proven to be stolen."
"Don’t worry about me. There’s security all over this place, the office, and they’ve been rolling by the apartment building regularly. I’m covered."
"They should have paid me; you’ll mention that to them. They should have paid me."
"I don’t know the lady. I’ve just read the army personnel file on her."
"I think heaven to mean something more than a place; I want it to be a relationship."
"What if it wasn’t just one payoff, but a series of them?"
"You can catch the guy whenever you can for the murders, but until then we pay him."
"To get in to see Henry just to make this claim of being his son—that couldn’t have been that easy to do."
"I’ve got my assistant at the house searching for anything in that time period, six months before and after that date."
"Marie’s too quiet and contained even under normal circumstances to get that good of a read on how she’s doing now."
"Don’t feel so sad. Tracey was happy until that last moment she died."
"You can’t carry that wish around with you for the next decade of your life, letting yourself die slowly because you didn’t die quickly on a sidewalk instead of Tracey."
"I’m not worried about the next month. I’ve been a cop a long time, and I haven’t seen murders like those two more than a couple times in my career."
"It’s hard to ignore living and get stuck in grief when life is piling on aggravations around you."