Read Online Spirit Lake by Christine DeSmet - Free Book Online

drew her legs up, wrapping her arms around her knees to set her chin there, following his pained gaze to Spirit Lake, seeing the anger darken him.
    After a shudder, she asked, “Who's this man, Cole? The murderer?"
    “My brother and I worked for Marco Rojas, an entrepreneur from Venezuela.” He spelled out the name. “He hated it when people didn't know enough about Spanish to know the ‘J’ is pronounced silently like an ‘h.’ ‘Ro-hoss the boss’ became our mantra."
    “So you worked for an egomaniac, but a very rich one."
    “Always suspicious and jealous of people with the same kind of money."
    “Afraid perhaps, that they'd find out he was a fraud?"
    He harumphed. “I hadn't thought of it that way, but perhaps."
    “Which makes him very dangerous. Like a rabid animal pushed into a corner,” she offered. “Where'd ‘Ro-Hoss’ get his big bucks?"
    “We've been lucky, hauling up a lot of pieces that museums and collectors pay big for."
    Laurel couldn't deny the thrilling sense of awe threading through her. “You're a modern day explorer. A Cousteau, a Titanic raiser."
    “Don't make it sound too romantic. The flip side of that was our racing. Mike lost an eye a few years back. Got hit by another boat when his split apart. I was ahead of them, and didn't see it happen. And now this."
    Her insides lurched for him.
    He continued, “Mike began running a Miami marina for Rojas while I continued racing the hydroboats. Mike managed all the books. He knew everything."
    “Too much?"
    “Enough to make Mike come up here and hide something about Rojas's operations."
    Shivering, she glanced over her shoulder at the old place. The idea of someone lurking about inside the clapboard hulk without her knowledge spooked her. Then a new thought struck: what if she'd razed the place already, destroying Cole's precious evidence? She shuddered to think how that would have left things for Cole.
    “When was your brother here?"
    “Almost two weeks ago now. When he returned, he and Rojas didn't see eye to eye on anything anymore. That's when..."
    When Cole's tanned face turned ashen, she hurried to him, feeling his forehead, her heart pounding. “You should be lying down and resting. I just put you through a lot with that scalpel."
    Cole swiped up her hands, clutching them for dear life in his fists, stilling her breathing again.
    His gaze scorched her. “Forget about my health. Listen to me,” he hissed, shaking her captured wrists to punctuate his words. “He's dead because of me. I was so damn angry that Mike wasn't telling me what was going on. He even warned me, said he thought Rojas was involved in something no good, that he was going to prove it.
    “We argued, right there on the dock before a race. I insisted on knowing right there what he'd found out. Mike told me to shut up. I'd never seen him like that. We always shared everything. But not this for some reason."
    “Maybe he didn't have all the evidence he thought he needed,” she offered.
    “But I kept badgering him. Made a scene.” His chest heaved up and down, his breathing so fiercely charged it felt as if he'd suck her in. “And to shut me up he took off in the speedboat I was about to warm up. He never did things like that. Nothing careless in his whole life. He was a good man. A good father, too."
    When he unhanded her, Laurel reeled from the raw love for his brother rimming his eyes. She couldn't move. “I'm sorry."
    “The man I worked for had rigged the boat. I'm sure of it. It blew up out in the water. My brother, gone, just like that."
    His hands had turned to ice, and she rubbed them instinctively to warm them. “I'm sorry."
    Stumbling up, he limped away, but stopped only a few feet from her because of the pain. She heard the pain on his sigh, saw it in the way his shoulders rose with several deep breaths.
    Scanning Spirit Lake toward the western horizon, he muttered, “Don't feel sorry for a man who should have saved his brother and who wishes