The Story Keeper Read Online Free Page B

I’d return the envelope to its place or look at the contents?
    Not this girl. I had plenty to do without toying with a loaded weapon. Whatever this was, it belonged in the war room, and the time to take it there was now, while the office was empty. No one would be the wiser. In the future, I’d watch my back, just in case. If this was a joke, the joke would be on somebody else once the package was quietly returned to its original resting place.
    In under a minute, I was out the door with the forbidden fruit innocuously tucked in a folder. Unfortunately, Roger was just around the corner at the coffee credenza, preparing his morning mug of brew.
    “At it early again?” He smiled, toasting me with his cup and seeming amiable enough. “You’re making the rest of us look bad, you know.”
    “You’re here too.” I tried to sound casual, but I felt like I had a package bomb squeezed to my chest. I just wanted to get rid of it before it blew.
    Yet in the back of my mind, there was that bit of aquamarine paper, the swirl of ink, the niggle of curiosity . . .
    “I have an author and an agent coming in for an early meeting in the boardroom,” Roger offered.
    Was it my imagination, or was he casting an eye toward the folder in my double-armed embrace? Maybe I looked guilty. Or maybe he knew what was inside. Maybe he’d put it on my desk.
    “Well, have a good meeting, then.” I turned on my heel and headed back to my office. My trip to Slush Mountain would have to wait.
    The folder seemed to grow heavier and hotter as I walked down the hall. A part of me was saying, Just tuck it in the desk drawer where no one will see it, then return it after they all leave thisevening. But another part of me, the part that had led me around more than one blind corner in my life, was saying, Well, if you’re stuck with the thing for a while, why not take a peek?
    That whisper of mischief, the one my father and the men of Lane’s Hill Church of the Brethren Saints had so vehemently tried to beat out of me as a child, always brought about one of two things: incredible adventure or unmitigated disaster.
    I was sliding my fingers over the forbidden treasure before I rounded the corner into my office and shut the door. The glue on the bottom flap clung for a moment, seeming determined to keep whatever secrets lay hidden inside, then the tension released, and the contents, perhaps fifty sheets in total, came loose in my hand, the blue-green piece on top. A pen-and-ink drawing inched into view   —a sketch of what looked like a thick cord holding six oval-shaped beads and a rectangular pendant of some sort, all ornately carved.
    The artwork was nicely done.
    Below the drawing, three words had been hand-inscribed in graceful, curving script that seemed fit for an ancient scroll in some long-hidden chest.
    The Story Keeper.

Chapter 3
    The Story Keeper
    CHAPTER ONE
    If they caught Sarra here listenin’, she’d get a beatin’. Each day that passed by, Brown Horne Drigger grew a little bolder, a little more sure that Sarra’s daddy wasn’t comin’ back for her. Could be he was dead in the river or tumbled off a rockslide on his mule or got by a black bear or shot for the money pouch he toted for Brown Drigger. Mighta been any of them things, or some other.
    The thought was a quilt of light and dark, worrisome in one way, freein’ in another. If her daddy was no more for this world, she could run, and there was scarce a thing she wanted more than to bolt off down the holler and fly far as her legs would carry her. But there was sin in bringin’ about the killin’ of the man who sired you, the man your mama must’ve loved sometime long past. And though she never knew much of him   —he’d come and went from Aginisi’s small farm as he’dchose to over the years   —Sarra knew sure as dayrise that he was the one who’d made her.
    There was no gettin’ by that truth, much as she wished it sometimes. As she’d rounded from