Read Online Healing Stones by Stephen Arterburn, Nancy Rue - Free Book Online

enchanted as I, and Jayne lectured him on the ecosystem he was seeing for the first time. I propped my chin on my hands and basked in a contentment I thought I’d lost completely.
    I never went out on the Sound with Zach after that day. The trysts that began in September took place right there at the dock, at night, pocketed in the cabin of The Testament. A few times, though, Zach convinced me to come when there was still light, so he could watch me flop on my tummy and bring up sea critters for him. He touched his first silken jellyfish with my hand holding his, saw his first shrimp swim, right across our side-by-side palms. To see me that way, he said, was worth the risk of someone spotting us.
    I hurried over that hidden world now and let myself into Zach’s slip. I wasn’t prepared for what I saw.
    The handsome vessel I knew was gone. In its place was a black skeleton, a lifeless tangle of ribs. The dock itself was remarkably uncharred—though not so surprising, considering Rich had been here to fight the flames. Every fire was a beast to him, he always said, a cruel, insatiable persona that had to be reckoned with. He fought never to let one take what didn’t belong to it. Even the piece of white cloth hanging from a hook on the wall was unstained by smoke.
    How, actually, could that be? It had to have been put there after the fire . . .
    Hope quickening in my chest, I hurried to it. When I picked up my own cream silk blouse, the one I’d worn that night and obviously dropped, a sickening panic rose in my throat.
    I don’t know how long I stood there, clutching silk and trying to breathe. It was long enough to confront what Ethan Kaye had tried to make me see.
    Zach had left. Deliberately.
    Unless someone else has hung this here , my pathetic desperation said to me.
    The fire inspector or the police would have taken it as evidence. This had been left for me—by a man who knew I’d come back for it—for him.
    Then where was he? And why would he leave me to deal with all this on my own?
    Estes and St. Clair had to be involved. Maybe because he was a man they’d cut him a break and given him the option to leave town rather than face Ethan.
    Maybe they’d forced him to go—because he’d caught their photographer red-handed and knew they’d set us up.
    That was patently ridiculous. No one knew we met on Zach’s boat. No one knew we met at all.
    Which led me back to the photographer—and the pictures in Wyatt Estes’s file folder—and Zach leaving his burned home without a word. Not even to me.
    I had the sudden urge to rip a life preserver off the wall and hurl it into Sinclair Inlet. I actually might have, if someone hadn’t banged on the door to the slip.
    â€œMr. Archer?” a voice demanded. “Port Orchard Police. Open up, sir!”

CHAPTER SIX
    I considered several options on the way to the slip’s outer door— among them, hurling myself into Sinclair Inlet. In the end I opened up and said, “Can I help you, officer?”
    Actually, there were two of them. One didn’t look much older than Christopher and had less swagger than my son. The other one was tall and straight-backed, half-balding, and faintly familiar. I probably knew him from high school.
    He flashed a badge from the inside of his nylon jacket and said, “We’re looking for Zachary Archer.”
    â€œMe too!” I said. My voice sounded high and chipper and completely ridiculous.
    â€œMind if I ask why?”
    â€œWe teach together at the college,” I said. “And he hasn’t shown up for class so I thought I’d come—look for him.”
    I felt like I was committing perjury under oath—and he knew it. He squinted at me and nodded to the square-shaped kid, whose hand hadn’t left his holster since I opened the door.
    â€œGo check it out,” the older one said.
    Boy Cop nodded and hurried toward the boat