White Lies Read Online Free

tomorrow.”
    They returned inside and Katrina paid for her purchases. She scooped out several little fridge magnets from a bowl on the counter. One read SAVE OUR EARTH, PLANT A TREE. Another: PLANT A LITTLE HAPPINESS. The third: I MY MOM. She added the first two to the bill; she returned the third to the bowl with a lump in her throat. A mother hen minus the chicks, that’s what she was. It was slightly tragic.
    She scribbled her signature on the Amex receipt and was just about to leave the shop when she froze. Outside on the other side of the glass door was
him
—the hitchhiker. His hands were jammed into the pockets of his loose jeans, his head down, his hair blowing in the wind. Katrina had only gotten a brief glimpse of his face before he’d passed by, but she knew she was not mistaken. She couldn’t decide whether she wanted to chase him down and demand to know why he was stalking her, or run out the back door. In the end she merely stood there, second-guessing her initial suspicion. Stalking her? No, she wasn’t thinking straight. It was just a coincidence. Had to be. Because even if he’d been crazy enough to spend the night tracking her down for whatever sick or vengeful reason, how had he done it? She’d told him she lived on Lake Wenatchee, not in Leavenworth. She’d never mentioned Leavenworth. She was sure of that. And it wasn’t like someone could have told him a Katrina had just moved into town. She didn’t know a soul in Leavenworth, and not a soul knew her. Unless—unless he’d contacted someone at the high school? No. Ridiculous. She’d only told him her first name. Certainly she hadn’t told him she was a teacher. She was being paranoid.
    But what was he doing here then?
    There was only one answer. He lived here. Not in Peshastin or Dryden or some other nearby town. Right here in Leavenworth. Hell, maybe they were neighbors. She could invite him over for strawberry jam, and they could reenact their showdown on the highway for kicks.
    Talk about starting out on the wrong foot.
    â€œDear?” the elderly woman said. “Is everything all right?”
    Katrina nodded and left the shop. She glanced down the street, the way the hitchhiker had gone. A mother pushing a baby carriage. A rotund middle-aged man painting the sign outside his shop. No hitchhiker. She headed off in the opposite direction. The September sky was a bright azure blue, scrubbed clean from the thunderstorm the night before. The wind was sharp and crisp, carrying with it the hint of autumn. In the distance, behind the gingerbread-style storefronts, the snowcapped peaks of the Northern Cascade Mountains towered majestically. She turned off Front Street the first chance she got. Her earlier rationale aside, she couldn’t shake the feeling Zach the hitchhiker was following her, ducking behind a mailbox or garbage can each time she looked back over her shoulder.
    The bungalow she was renting on Wheeler Street was a quaint redbrick with white shutters and matching trim. It was set far back from the road and just visible through the branches of two massive Douglas firs and a ponderosa pine. The grass in the yard was shin high. The flower garden was dead. The ivy crawling up the front wall only reluctantly gave way to a large bay window. If she left it how it was, it would make a perfect haunted house for Halloween next month. However, becoming the town witch was not in the playbook, and with a little work—including the addition of the plants and flowers she’d purchased today—it would clean up nicely.
    The reason she’d chosen this place, as opposed to something a little more up-market, was the space and privacy it offered. She’d spent most of her life living in tightly packed city neighborhoods. So when the real estate agent had mentioned a single-bedroom, single-bath bungalow on a four-acre lot, she’d driven down the following day for an in-person