Last to Know Read Online Free Page A

the faint splash of water.
    He stood listening, the dog alert in front of him. Perhaps this sound was what had disturbed the dog. He wondered who else besides Len could be out on the lake at this time of night. Teenagers, he decided, looking for trouble and hopefully not finding it. Drugs didn’t seem to be a problem here at the lake, but you never knew. What Harry did know, though, was that if you wanted trouble enough you would find it.
    A small boat slid into view, being rowed from the opposite shore. The rower pulled up to the Osbornes’ wooden jetty. A man got out, quickly stowed the oars, then slid the craft into the boathouse. Moments later, keeping to the shadows, he walked silently toward the house. Harry recognized Wally Osborne. And then, emerging from the woods, came his son, Roman, also keeping out of sight of his father, who he followed back to the house. Harry gave a soft surprised whistle. He wondered what Wally had been up to. And young Roman, though he guessed the teenager had been partying.
    Suddenly, a pink glow spread across the night sky. Surprised, Harry glanced at the house across the lake and saw the young blond girl standing at the open door. Her face was distorted in a scream. Her hair was a ring of fire. And then she was running, plunging into the lake, just as the house behind her burst into an inferno. And Harry was thrown to the ground with the force of the ensuing explosion.

 
    5
    EVENING LAKE, 3 A.M. , Rose Osborne
    Rose Osborne woke at the same time as Harry Jordan. Startled out of a bad dream, she reached nervously across the bed for her husband but Wally was not there. The covers were thrown back and Wally’s side of the bed was cold, which meant he’d been gone for some time. It wasn’t unusual these days. Her husband had not been sleeping well; Rose thought he’d probably gone down to the kitchen to get a cup of the chamomile tea she recommended, though she suspected it was more likely to be a shot or two of vodka.
    They had come to the family vacation house on the lake, as they had every summer since their first child was born eighteen years ago, when Rose was a mere girl of twenty-one. Married too young, as she realized ruefully later, but so hotly in love nothing else mattered but being with Wally who wanted her “forever.” So what else could she do but marry him.
    Wally called Rose his “lavish” woman. She was round and soft, always hoping to be a size twelve but mostly sticking at fourteen. She loved that Wally enjoyed the way she looked, the way she felt under his hands. She was still the same size now, still round and soft with a mass of curly, coppery-brown hair worn shaggy to her shoulders because it was easier that way, and big brown eyes that Wally had once told her were definitely not “spaniel-like.” More of a Labrador, he said. Rose had not been sure if that was a compliment but decided it was better if she took it that way. Her long legs and racehorse-slender ankles were her best features, that and her smiley mouth and pleasing expression.
    Wally didn’t tell her he loved her “Labrador” eyes until after she agreed to marry him and he’d actually put the ring on her finger “just to make sure,” he said with that smile that twisted up her heart and melted her bones and made her tremble with desire for him. He wanted her! Rose Gothorpe, born to an American father and English mother who Rose thought must have been a direct descendent of Queen Victoria, whose mores and moral code her mother followed perfectly, imposing them on her own daughter, making Rose feel wicked for her desire.
    Being an only child wasn’t all bad though, Rose remembered now. She was thinking of her own brood and their sibling squabbles and the times she’d had to separate them like sparring wrestlers fighting over which twin had taken whose ballet slippers and which one had deleted whose homework and who had eaten the last of the ice cream and put the empty carton back in the