Water to Burn Read Online Free Page A

only a few. The wave, well, it seemed to come out of nowhere, this great rush of water, like a green wall. Look, you can see the damp patch on the sand, over there to the south of us.”
    I looked and noted the darker sand, a stretch maybe twenty feet long and a good ten feet beyond the soaked firm sand of the tide line. Ari pulled out his cell phone and walked a couple of yards away to snap photos of it.
    “It pulled both children into the sea, I take it,” I said.
    Wilson nodded. “Cody managed to get out again. Brittany didn’t.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that.”
    Wilson choked back a sob. “The oddest thing, though.” He glanced at the huddled group behind him, as if reassuring himself they were still safe. “The wave, it was like it had tentacles or hands. It was reaching for our kids, I swear it, with strands of seawater. I could feel a malignancy in that wave. Satan, I suppose, bent on murder.” He gave me an odd twisted smile, all pain and black humor. “The police think I’m crazy. Do you?”
    “No,” I said. “I don’t think it was Satan, but if you say you felt something malignant, you could be right. I don’t know yet, but I’m not dismissing what you say.”
    “Thanks.” He gulped for breath, then turned away. “It meant to take them. I swear it.”
    I let him go back to his flock. Ari rejoined me.
    “I’ve seen enough,” I said. “Let’s get out of everyone’s way.”
    We crossed the highway, but at the head of the path down, I glanced back at the ocean. I saw, just for a brief moment, the figure of an enormous woman standing on the sea. The fog wrapped her with gray mourning clothes, and a dead child lay across her outstretched arms. I knew then that the girl had drowned.

CHAPTER 2
     

     
    B Y THE TIME WE RETURNED TO OUR PARKED CAR, I was so cold that just getting into the driver’s seat felt like putting on a fur coat. I slid the keys into the ignition, then sat rubbing my icy hands to warm them up before I tried to drive.
    “That wasn’t a coincidence, was it?” Ari said.
    “What wasn’t?”
    “Our happening on this accident.”
    I contemplated the question while I buckled my seat belt. “I’m not sure,” I said. “It’s just luck that we were so close when the chopper went over. But something’s been prompting me to get down to the water all day.”
    Ari stared out the windshield for a moment. “I see,” he said. “You know, I’ve had quite enough of flat hunting.”
    “So have I. Let’s go over to Eileen’s. She won’t mind if we’re early.”
    “I need to go back to the apartment first and change.”
    “Why? You’re already wearing a suit. You look fine.”
    “That’s not it. I can’t keep this jacket on all evening to hide the shoulder holster. I need to get a smaller weapon.”
    Some men change their clothes to suit an occasion. Ari changes his gun.
    While Ari rummaged through his half-unpacked luggage, I checked my messages on both my landline and my cell phone, and a good thing I did. My sister Kathleen had called to tell me that I could bring Ari to the party on Sunday, since he was back in town. Either Eileen had called her, or we’d mentally overlapped. My immediate reaction: Party? What party? A frantic search of my memory turned up the data that Kathleen had, a couple of weeks before, when I was enmeshed in the most dangerous case of my career, invited me to a pool party. Kathleen has never been known for her good timing.
    I walked into the bedroom to see Ari putting his shoulder holster and semiautomatic pistol away in the bottom drawer of my dresser, where I kept my underwear.
    “Symbolism?” I said.
    He looked at me as if I’d spoken in Martian. “What?” he said. “This is the only drawer that locks.”
    “Just a joke,” I said. “Don’t let it bother you.”
    He had a tiny pistol that fit into a holster that slid under the waistband of his slacks. Before he stowed it, though, he held up the gun.
    “This is a Sig Sauer