Read Online Blood Moon by Alexandra Sokoloff - Free Book Online Page B

shifting moonlit pines, then pulled open the driver’s door, dropped into the car and drove.
     
     

Chapter Seven
     
     
    He woke in another motel, with a completely different landscape out the window: green rolling hills and twisted oak trees.
    The Sebastians owned an olive ranch outside San Luis Obispo in central California, for Roarke’s money about the most gorgeous stretch of California in existence. In a state where knockout scenery was the norm, that was saying a lot.
    He’d driven five hours the night before, which put him into SLO about half-past midnight. Far too late for a casual drop-in, but he’d phoned Sebastian en route and asked to see Jason the next morning. Sebastian had agreed.
    Roarke drove in from the motel as the sun was burning off the coastal mist. The olive ranch was just a few miles inland, a huge spread, rambling over the hills, with the sturdy little trees lined up in rows, not much taller than the grapevines that comprised the area’s famous vineyards. Olives were an old crop in California but the gourmet and organic food craze had launched a whole new demand for artisanal olive oil. Roarke suspected that the Sebastian’s “ranch” would more aptly be called a multimillion dollar agribusiness, and as he drove up the winding road toward the Sebastian home, he felt a tightness in his chest that he was aware was alpha-male competitiveness. He stopped in front of the old Spanish-style ranch house beside a late-model Tundra parked in the drive, and took a deep breath to settle himself before he got out and moved toward the porch. Mark Sebastian stood waiting for him.
    Sebastian was in his mid-thirties, dark blond and brown eyes, fit, tan and attractive in the casual way the wealthy and successful in California managed without seeming to spare a thought for it. But a genuine person, Roarke had to admit, a wounded recent divorcé who had succumbed to Cara Lindstrom’s unusual charms.
    He pushed the front door open for Roarke and Roarke instantly felt the underlying tension. Neither man would ever say it, but it was silently understood that Sebastian responded to Roarke’s requests because it kept him connected to Cara, and because Roarke was probably the only human being on the planet who would understand that. She had been Sebastian’s lover for three days at most, but her imprint on him would last a long time.
    He had been no use in terms of evidence that would lead to her, though. The story she had given him had been completely false, and he had seen only what she wanted him to see.
    His son Jason was a force, a quiet tornado of a boy who, like many children of addicts and alcoholics, observed and understood far more about the adult world around him than most boys his age. Young as he was, he seemed to have a better grasp on Cara Lindstrom than his father ever had.
    “Special Agent Roarke!” he shouted as he ran into the room and stopped on a dime, two feet in front of Roarke, looking him over. “FBI Special Agent Roarke,” he repeated.
    “Hello, Jason,” Roarke said, and felt a disquieting warmth in his chest at the boy’s enthusiasm. Roarke was more than three years divorced himself and wasn’t sure that children of his own were in his future, something he never thought anything about… except lately, in Jason Sebastian’s compelling presence. He sat on a nearby ottoman to put himself at the boy’s height.
    “I wanted to talk to you some more, is that okay?”
    “About Leila,” Jason stated. It was the name Cara had given the Sesbastians, undoubtedly one of many aliases, but the only name Jason knew her by.
    “Yes. I wondered if…” Roarke paused, and surprised himself with his next words. “If you had heard anything from her.”
    The boy looked at him, clear gray eyes. “Uh huh. She left me a dolphin last night.”
    Both Roarke and Mark Sebastian were electrified. “What?” “Jason, what ?” The men overlapped each other. Roarke’s throat was suddenly so dry he