Read Online A Night at the Asylum by Jade McCahon - Free Book Online Page B

“Not a good idea to take your car still. And…I want to
go home.”
    Cole smiled a curious half-smile, his eyes
going back and forth between us. “Why isn’t it a good idea to take
your car?” he asked Jamie.
    “Come on,” she answered energetically,
grabbing his hand and pulling him toward the parking lot. “We’ll
take your car. We’ll fill you in on the way.”
    “Okay,” Cole answered agreeably. “I get it.
You’re a take-charge kind of girl.”
    “That’s right, baby.”
    “Works for me.”
    They left me standing in the field, my mouth
hanging open, lost in my own reverie.
    ****
    Five minutes later as Cole drove toward my
house with Jamie hugging her knees in the passenger seat, the past
three hours’ events spilled out of us and we started to piece
together a very crude, very perplexing puzzle. Ead Sutter became
the inevitable core of our discussion for various reasons, but as
was always the case with anything Ead was involved in, there could
only be suspicion and conjecture.
    The mood in the car turned particularly sober
as Cole reminded me why he despised Ead so much. Around town, the
deputy’s smarmy manner was widely mocked behind his back. Coupled
with his daddy’s position of power, it was easy to consider him a
joke…to discount the truly dangerous vibes rolling off him in
waves. “He used to follow Jenny around constantly,” Cole explained
sourly, anger at the edges of his voice. “It really used to creep
her out.”
    Jamie picked up on what we were talking about
immediately. “Your sister is the girl in the posters,” she
acknowledged gently, glancing at me with regret. Those posters that
were plastered up all over town – that infectious, silly smile
identical to Cole’s – how could anyone miss them? “Oh, God. I’m so
sorry. She’s been gone for so long. What happened, if you don’t
mind me asking?”
    The muscles in Cole’s arms tensed as he
gripped the steering wheel. “She went to the store to pick up a
cake for my mom’s birthday. She never came home. They found her car
on the side of the highway with her purse inside…there was no sign
of her.” He looked at me in the rearview mirror, his eyes narrowed.
“They said she ran away. She never would have done that.”
    “It was right around this time of year when
she disappeared, wasn’t it?” Jamie asked. I vaguely pondered how
often she’d looked at those posters. Maybe the date was just
something she’d banked in her memory, floating on a gauzy cloud of
town gossip. “In fact…” she trailed off, unwilling to finish the
sentence.
    “Yeah.” Cole caught onto what Jamie was
trying to say, and his eyes widened in surprise. “It was exactly
five years ago. As of midnight…” he looked down at his watch,
assessing the date. “Yeah. Five years ago today .”
    The coincidence touched each of us like the
icy fingers of a cold breeze.
    Jamie glanced at me, her eyes full of
unspoken secrets. I wondered what was going on in her mind. I
wondered how much she knew without anyone telling her. She turned
back to Cole, her voice unnaturally quiet. “So…you think…Ead…”
    Cole nodded, again finishing her half-spoken
question. “When she didn’t come back…he was the first person I
thought of. The first person we all thought of.”
    Jamie sighed. “How awful. They never found
any evidence to connect him to her disappearance?”
    “Nothing,” Cole answered darkly. “But I’m not
sure they even looked. Jon…he tried so hard to connect the dots,
but there was nothing.” Raymond’s brother had been dating Jenny
when she disappeared. He’d been half-crazed in his pursuit to find
her. “Ead’s father being the police commissioner…he’s never had to
answer for anything he’s ever done. And my parents got tired of
fighting a losing battle, and…that’s when we left this shit hole
for good.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Of course,
though, I had to come back to see the ball drop on the