Larkspur Cove Read Online Free Page A

Boulders? Nah, there’s no way to get there, other than from the water – unless you know those old logging roads or you climb down the cliffs. Why?”
    Sheila lowered the binoculars, shaking her head. “I just had the strangest feeling. Something caught the corner of my eye when I was counting out the change, so I grabbed the binoculars. For just a sec, I swear I saw a little girl over there. A little girl in a brown dress, running along the shore, but when I tried to focus in, she was gone. There’s nobody in the area but old Len, checking his trotlines.” She looked at me and rubbed her hands up and down her arms, like the room had a chill in it all of a sudden.
    Dorsey lifted his baseball cap, scratching his forehead with the knob of his wrist. “Not much chance Len’d have a little girl with him. Not much chance he’d have anybody, for that matter. Anybody within fifteen feet of Len wouldn’t stay there long, I’ll guar-own-tee. The smell would drive ’em off, for sure. Maybe it was the Wailing Woman you saw. Maybe she’s out walkin’ around in the daytime.”
    “Oh, Daddy, for heaven’s sake, no ghost stories.” Sheila scanned the southeast end of the lake, where the water circled a little island, narrowed under Eagle Eye Bridge and wound up the river channel. “Mart, I know I saw someone, though . . .”
    Hooking his hands over the window ledge, Dorsey pulled himself to his feet. “I don’t see anythin’.”
    “Len’s already gone upriver. Careful, Daddy. You’ll fall.” She moved around the counter to slip a hand under Dorsey’s elbow, and he shrugged it off, turning toward the deep water by the dam.
    “Oh, hang, Mart. You better grab that thermos and go. Looks like you got a boatful of joyriders headin’ for the Scissortail.”
    Snagging my thermos, I started out the back door. There was something about the Scissortail that brought in idiots like June bugs to a porch light. Hard to say what it was, but if there was a yay-hoo anywhere on the lake who was either too young or too sauced up to think his way out of a paper bag, he’d eventually get the idea to ignore the shallow-water signs, go around the warning buoys, and try to thread the needle between the two spikes of rock that rose out of the water like the feathers of a scissortail flycatcher. Couple that with the bird watchers looking for bald eagle nests, daredevils climbing the Scissortail to jump off into the water, and kids on party barges – and those two spikes of limestone amounted to a constant headache. I was out there at least six times a day, trying to keep some loser from ending up in a wheelchair or dead from pure stupidity.

I know every bird in the mountains,
and the creatures of the field are mine.
    – Psalm 50:11 \
    (Left on the wall of wisdom
     by a missionary on a bicycle)
    Chapter 3
    Andrea Henderson
    No determination exists under heaven like that of a woman afraid she’ll be stranded in the woods when darkness comes. I was alone again, having successfully frightened away the creepy man in the pickup by pulling out my cell phone and pretending to talk to someone. After a few seconds of nodding and talking, I’d waved and yelled, “Never mind! A sheriff ’s car is coming. They’ll be here any minute. Thanks, anyway!” But as more time passed, my sense of doom grew. I’d even tried walking to the top of the nearest hill to look for any hint of civilization. There was none.
    I was having no luck with outgoing cell calls, and no more vehicles had passed. No one would come looking for me until this evening, when my son finally determined that something was wrong. If Dustin called my office at that point, the place would be closed, and no one would listen to phone messages until morning. Dustin wouldn’t have a clue where my schedule had taken me today, or where to send the cavalry, in the form of my parents or my sister, Megan, and brother-in-law, Oswaldo. So, one way or another, I had to rescue