Read Online Fatal Inheritance by Sandra Orchard - Free Book Online Page B

gotten used to the “music,” the critters invited a new voice to the party—the thrumming bass strings of some other amphibian.
    “Aaaah!”
    Tripod instantly lifted his head and gave her a worried look.
    “Sorry, boy. Go back to sleep.” One of them might as well. She snapped on the bedside lamp and shimmied up to lean against the headboard.
    The phone rang.
    She tensed. This couldn’t be happening. Not again. Not at—she peered at the clock—three in the morning. What had Josh told her to do?
    She scrubbed her head, trying to clear her foggy brain.
    The phone blasted again.
    She snatched it up.
    “Bec, you okay?” Josh’s sleep-roughened voice wrapped around her heart and slowed it to an even gallop. “I saw your light come on.”
    She glanced back to the window. Through the sparse line of trees that separated her house from Josh’s, she could just make out a light.
    He sounded as if he’d just awakened, and the thought that he’d been watching her place so diligently that he’d noticed her light come on in the wee hours of the morning chased the chill that had gripped her.
    “Bec?” he repeated, concern pitching the question up an octave.
    She tried not to read more into his concern than there was. He was, after all, a police officer. Protecting people from intruders was his job. “I couldn’t sleep for the frog noises. Do you have any idea how many different sounds they make?”
    He chuckled. “And knowing your imagination, you sectioned them into orchestra parts.”
    “A rock band, actually,” she admitted, heartened that he remembered their evenings sitting around the campfire with Gran and Gramps, making up stories about the night sounds.
    Josh’s laugh eased the last of her tension. “Tripod okay?”
    “Sleeping like a baby. I’m sorry I woke you.”
    His snort suggested that he hadn’t been able to sleep, either, despite the gravelly sound of his voice. She really should let him try. No reason both of them should be tossing all night.
    “Have you tried counting sheep?” he asked.
    “Just wolves.”
    He groaned. “We’re going to catch this guy. I promise you.” His earnestness wound around her heart the way his strong arms had protectively wrapped around her earlier. Oh, boy, she should so not be going there.
    As noble as Josh was, sentry duty was bound to get old quick. “Um, I think I’ll just read for a bit. Get my mind off...things.”
    “You sure?”
    “Yes.” Who was she kidding? She’d just traded one preoccupation for another. But thankfully, Josh took her at her word and said good-night. The last thing she wanted was for him to feel as if he had to constantly watch out for her like a big brother. She slipped the phone back onto the nightstand. “Or worse, like some rescued stray.”
    Tripod lifted his head and whimpered.
    “No offense, bud. Josh loves you. I’m sure he’ll never get tired of having you around.” Not the way her dad had forced them to give up their one and only dog after less than three weeks.
    Not wanting to remember other things Dad had quickly tired of—including her—Becki pulled one of Gran’s photo albums onto her lap. Mom and Dad had never taken pictures of them, so Becki and her sister had relished posing for the camera whenever they visited Gran and Gramps.
    Gran had written little notes beneath each one, too.
    Becki traced her finger over a picture of Gramps carrying her on his shoulders in front of the house. She couldn’t have been more than five or six. Beneath the picture Gran had written, “Our Becki says she wants to live here always, even when she’s big.”
    Not like her daddy.
    Gran would never have written the words that whispered through Becki’s thoughts, but she knew that Dad’s restlessness had always tugged at Gran’s heart. Becki had never understood why her dad had loathed Serenity so much. He was the polar opposite of Josh.
    She forced her mind away from Josh and back to her dad. He’d rarely stuck around for