The Perfect Outsider Read Online Free Page B

rock face and ran under the boardwalk before meandering out into the valley.
    The rooms deeper inside the caves had no windows but were vented via stone flues to the ground on top, and the chill inside, even during summer, was eased by a great stone hearth in the central living area and by smaller cast-iron wood-burning stoves in the rooms. When the architect had left the house to his sister, she’d had no idea what to do with it and had let it stand empty; the place had faded from the memory of those who had known about it. When she found out that Hannah Mendes, a relative by marriage, needed a safe house to help cult victims escape, she had offered the cave house as a perfect solution because of the hidden-tunnel access to the valley on the other side.
    As June and her injured stranger reached the boardwalk, Jesse passed out. She struggled to hold him, but he slid from her grasp and slumped with a dull thud onto the wooden slats of the walkway. Adrenaline thrummed through her as she checked his pulse. It was steady, and he was still breathing. She worried now about intracranial swelling pressuring his brain.
    Laying him in a prone position on the boardwalk, she ran to the house and banged on the door.
    “I need help! Can someone come out here and help me!”
    The door swung open. Molly, an eighteen-year-old whom June had brought to the safe house last week, stood in the doorway, pulling on her sweater, eyes wide circles of consternation. “What’s going on! Did they find us!”
    God, I hope not.
    “I found a man down a ravine while I was searching for Lacy. He’s got a Devotee tattoo, and he’s hurt—”
    “Is he a henchman?” Molly peered nervously down the boardwalk. “Why did you bring him here! Does he know what happened to Lacy?”
    “I don’t know who he is. He doesn’t remember anything—”
    “You shouldn’t have brought him here!”
    “Molly, calm down and help me carry him. We’ll lock him in my room until we stitch him up and learn more.”
    Molly refused to budge.
    “ Molly, we can’t leave him to die out here. Go get Davis and Brad—now!”
    The two men came running out into the rain and helped carry Jesse inside.
    “Take him to my room!” June yelled as she rushed behind them. “Molly, get me some towels, hot water, the big medical kit from the main bathroom.”
    June shucked her wet jacket. “Lay him on my bed. Brad, ask your mom to come light the fire in the stove in my room.”
    She checked Jesse’s breathing again—still steady. His pulse was okay, too. June palmed off her wet peaked cap, and Molly pulled a side table alongside the bed atop which she put the medical kit.
    June shone a small flashlight into the stranger’s eyes. His pupils responded normally, then, as if irritated by the light, he blinked fast, moaning as he came around again.
    Relief washed through June. Maybe the guy was just exhausted. She wondered how long he’d actually been in the mountains, how many hours he’d lain, wet and cold, in the ravine, and when he’d last gotten some calories into him. She had to remove his wet clothes, warm him up.
    “Molly, please go heat up some of that soup Sonya made the other day—I’m beginning to think our stranger has been walking through the wilderness for some time.”
    “Why do you want to help him—you said he’s a Devotee, and look, he’s got a holster. Only henchmen carry sidearms. He’s got to be a henchman.”
    June shot her a glance. “Do you recognize him? Has anyone in this house seen him before?”
    “No.”
    “Then let’s give him the benefit of the doubt, okay?”
    The one thing she had not given Matt.
    “Just because I don’t recognize him from Cold Plains doesn’t mean he’s not a henchman.”
    “Molly, just get the soup. And on your way to the kitchen, ask Davis to fetch a change of men’s clothing from the closet in the big room. There should be sweatpants and a T-shirt in there large enough to fit him.”
    June made sure there was