Whiplash River Read Online Free Page A

kidding. She wasn’t kidding. The empanadas looked like something you might reasonably put ketchup on. He stopped laughing when he saw her face. So she laughed.
    â€œYou should have seen your face,” she said. “I didn’t think you’d fall for that.”
    â€œYou’d be surprised what I fall for,” the Shithead said.
    Evelyn smiled. This would be so easy. It almost wasn’t fair. “Good to know,” she said.
    Â 
    SHE ATE THE EMPANADAS, ADMITTEDLY fantastic, talked herself out of dessert, and then drove her rented golf cart back to the resort.
    From her bungalow, she called to check on Sarah. It was noon in L.A. Sarah told her that Andre had come by to take her to breakfast at the Farmers Market. Evelyn didn’t say the approximately one thousand things she had to say about that. About how the sneaky asshole waited until Evelyn was out of the country to show even the slightest interest in his own daughter.
    â€œSend me a text later,” Evelyn said. “Tell me how much you miss me.”
    â€œMom!” Sarah laughed. “You’re such a dork.”
    Evelyn had been gone less than twenty-four hours and already she missed Sarah so much it ached.
    â€œDon’t text when you’re driving. Don’t borrow my yoga mat and lose it again. Don’t join a cult.”
    â€œCheck, check, oops,” Sarah said. “Too late.”
    And don’t believe anything that your asshole of a father tells you, Evelyn thought but didn’t say.
    â€œDoes it seem like a nice cult at least?” Evelyn said. “Do they have a cute secluded compound in the desert?”
    Her daughter was, literally, the last teenager in California who would ever join a cult. Or text while driving. Evelyn knew that Sarah would probably spend the rest of her weekend studying for the SATs, practicing her jump shot, and downloading recipes for healthy, delicious, one-pot meals. Maybe taking a break to learn Farsi and help inner-city kids create a sustainable dairy farm.
    She wouldn’t, in other words, be smoking pot or luring a skateboard punk rocker up to her bedroom or sneaking into a club to see Social Distortion. Nor any of the other myriad transgressions that Evelyn would have committed, sixteen years old and left more or less on her own for a week.
    Sometimes Evelyn couldn’t believe that she and Sarah came from the same gene pool. If they didn’t have the same laugh, the same scowl first thing in the morning, the same gangly legs, Evelyn might have seriously wondered about some mix-up in the maternity ward, a nurse switching one baby for another.
    â€œText me,” Evelyn said. “Every fifteen minutes if it’s convenient, okay?”
    â€œMom!”
    A few minutes after Evelyn hung up, there was a knock on the door. She took her firearm out of her purse, chambered a round, and checked the peephole. On the deck of her bungalow stood Cory Nadler, of all people.
    Evelyn stuck the gun back in her purse and opened the door.
    â€œCory?” she said.
    â€œHi, Evi,” he said. He looked cranky and sweaty. “Can I come in?”
    â€œSure. Of course.” She took a seat on the edge of the bed. He sat in the wicker chair with the floral-print cushion. He was wearing a navy suit that looked way too hot for this climate. “What are you doing here, Cory?”
    â€œI’m with DSS now,” he said.
    â€œDiplomatic security?”
    â€œOut of the embassy in Mexico City. But I’ve been doing liaison work in Belize the last couple of months. I happened to be looking through passenger manifests this morning and I saw your name.”
    â€œCory,” she said, “take your coat off. That suit looks way too hot for Belize.”
    â€œIt’s fine,” he said.
    â€œIs it wool? You look like you’re dying.”
    â€œIt’s tropical wool.”
    Evelyn cocked her head, dubious. “I don’t think it