Read Online Blood Moon by Alexandra Sokoloff - Free Book Online
Authors: Alexandra Sokoloff
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down in the still-warm sand amid patches of salt grass to think.
As far as his stated mission went, the trip so far had been a total bust. No one knew where Cara was. No one left on his list was likely to know where she was.
His biggest score of the journey had been on the Reaper: the fact that the killer had left a savaged animal as a calling card. In his mind he heard Erin’s shaky voice.
He’s dead, isn’t he ? He must be dead .
He shook his head to dispel the feeling of unease.
Cara. Focus on Cara .
He could go back up through Palm Desert, look at the old files on the murder of the youth home counselor. But he knew that was only his own curiosity. Deep down he was sure that Cara had killed the man. At fourteen years old. He thought briefly of Erin’s story, the bully who surely had had a private visit from Cara. At least whatever she’d done to the kid, he’d gotten away with his life.
But those old attacks had nothing to do with his hunt. As reluctant as he was to admit it, the best chance of finding her, barring a hospital report or getting lucky on a car she’d stolen, was to pick up her trail again at her next kill. Unless she was dead. And he knew in his bones she wasn’t.
And whether she was in a cooling-off period or not, it was almost certain that she would kill again. Whatever drove her, she had been on her bloody mission for a long time.
He stared out at the rolling waves, the liquid gold of the melting sun, and felt the coarse sand under his fingers. Then he pushed himself up to his feet.
Somehow it would have to stop.
From the bluffs, she watches.
She follows along the narrow and sandy trail, keeping back from the cliff’s edge, as far below her Roarke walks along the water.
She has followed him from Blythe.
Not literally; that would be far too risky. He is too astute not to pick up that he is being tailed on the road.
His rental car is a Camry; she has a master key for the make. So while Roarke had slept fitfully in her old house, her old room, she’d checked the GPS of the car, and found several destinations programmed into the device: Ironwood Prison — meaning he’d been to see that vermin Trent, her non-uncle. The police department in Palm Desert — meaning he must be thinking of asking questions about the group home counselor she’d taken care of so very many years ago now, after he and his sociopathic teen protégé had forced their way into her room one night, thinking that as the youngest female in the home she’d be easy prey.
She could tell Roarke all about it, how she’d fought back with everything in her, which turned out to be much more than she’d ever expected. The counselor had fled the premises for fear of discovery and then testified she’d attacked and tried to kill the older boy, whom she’d beaten into unconsciousness. For which she’d been sent up to Youth Authority, California’s maximum security juvenile facility, for three years.
By the time she’d got out, her fighting skills had improved immeasurably. The first thing she’d done upon release was make sure the counselor could never be a problem for anyone ever again.
The last address in Roarke’s GPS was her cousin Erin. So this is where she has followed him, driving her own route down to San Diego and the campus, in the truck she took from the cement plant. The battered, dusty truck is naturally inconspicuous on the desert roads; she has passed many such trucks on her rare forays out of the Joshua Tree cabin. And there has been another point in its favor: she doubts the traffickers from the cement plant are cooperating with authorities in any way. They aren’t about to report a stolen vehicle, if they even know or care it is gone.
She is still processing the oddity of seeing Roarke with Erin. Erin has grown into her looks, no longer the awkward and coltish, paralyzingly shy girl that Cara remembers from a far, far different life.
She is sure she knows what they were talking about. When
As far as his stated mission went, the trip so far had been a total bust. No one knew where Cara was. No one left on his list was likely to know where she was.
His biggest score of the journey had been on the Reaper: the fact that the killer had left a savaged animal as a calling card. In his mind he heard Erin’s shaky voice.
He’s dead, isn’t he ? He must be dead .
He shook his head to dispel the feeling of unease.
Cara. Focus on Cara .
He could go back up through Palm Desert, look at the old files on the murder of the youth home counselor. But he knew that was only his own curiosity. Deep down he was sure that Cara had killed the man. At fourteen years old. He thought briefly of Erin’s story, the bully who surely had had a private visit from Cara. At least whatever she’d done to the kid, he’d gotten away with his life.
But those old attacks had nothing to do with his hunt. As reluctant as he was to admit it, the best chance of finding her, barring a hospital report or getting lucky on a car she’d stolen, was to pick up her trail again at her next kill. Unless she was dead. And he knew in his bones she wasn’t.
And whether she was in a cooling-off period or not, it was almost certain that she would kill again. Whatever drove her, she had been on her bloody mission for a long time.
He stared out at the rolling waves, the liquid gold of the melting sun, and felt the coarse sand under his fingers. Then he pushed himself up to his feet.
Somehow it would have to stop.
From the bluffs, she watches.
She follows along the narrow and sandy trail, keeping back from the cliff’s edge, as far below her Roarke walks along the water.
She has followed him from Blythe.
Not literally; that would be far too risky. He is too astute not to pick up that he is being tailed on the road.
His rental car is a Camry; she has a master key for the make. So while Roarke had slept fitfully in her old house, her old room, she’d checked the GPS of the car, and found several destinations programmed into the device: Ironwood Prison — meaning he’d been to see that vermin Trent, her non-uncle. The police department in Palm Desert — meaning he must be thinking of asking questions about the group home counselor she’d taken care of so very many years ago now, after he and his sociopathic teen protégé had forced their way into her room one night, thinking that as the youngest female in the home she’d be easy prey.
She could tell Roarke all about it, how she’d fought back with everything in her, which turned out to be much more than she’d ever expected. The counselor had fled the premises for fear of discovery and then testified she’d attacked and tried to kill the older boy, whom she’d beaten into unconsciousness. For which she’d been sent up to Youth Authority, California’s maximum security juvenile facility, for three years.
By the time she’d got out, her fighting skills had improved immeasurably. The first thing she’d done upon release was make sure the counselor could never be a problem for anyone ever again.
The last address in Roarke’s GPS was her cousin Erin. So this is where she has followed him, driving her own route down to San Diego and the campus, in the truck she took from the cement plant. The battered, dusty truck is naturally inconspicuous on the desert roads; she has passed many such trucks on her rare forays out of the Joshua Tree cabin. And there has been another point in its favor: she doubts the traffickers from the cement plant are cooperating with authorities in any way. They aren’t about to report a stolen vehicle, if they even know or care it is gone.
She is still processing the oddity of seeing Roarke with Erin. Erin has grown into her looks, no longer the awkward and coltish, paralyzingly shy girl that Cara remembers from a far, far different life.
She is sure she knows what they were talking about. When
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