Read Online Stonebrook Cottage by Carla Neggers - Free Book Online Page B

wake up the kids and clear out before he got back here? She couldn't think straight. She started back to the living room with her armload of sheets.
    "Aunt Kara!" Lillian called in a panicked whisper, crab-walking up the short hall from the bedroom. Her face was ashen. "Get down! He can see you!"
    "Lillian, good God—"
    "Get down!"
    Doing as she asked, Kara crouched down with her sheets and made her way to Lillian. "What is it, Lil?" The frightened girl was barely breathing. "Did you have a nightmare? Did you see my friend Sam—"
    "It's the man…" She faltered, unable to speak. Purple splotches spread across her pale cheeks as she gulped in more and more air, not breathing out.
    "Lillian…honey, you need to hold your breath for a couple of seconds. You're not exhaling. If you get too much oxygen into your bloodstream, you'll pass out."
    She raised her huge blue eyes to Kara and dutifully held her breath for two seconds, then blew out a sharp breath and blurted, "It's the man from the ranch!"
    "What man? Where?"
    "Outside. I saw him. Henry said we shouldn't tell you about him until we get to Stonebrook Cottage, but he's here. Mom doesn't even know about him."
    Kara could feel Lillian's near hysteria infecting her. Wisps of blond hair matted the girl's damp forehead and temples, beads of perspiration formed on her freckled nose. Kara steadied herself. "Lillian, where? Where is this man?"
    "Out front. He's in a car. I saw him from the bedroom window."
    "Are you sure? This is the city. There are lots of cars—"
    "It's him. Come on, I'll show you." She tugged on Kara's arm, but when Kara tried to stand up, Lillian gasped and dug her fingernails into her godmother's wrists, almost drawing blood. "Stay down."
    Whatever was going on with these kids, Kara thought, it was serious and undoubtedly more than she could handle alone. She set the sheets on the floor and tried to maintain an outward air of calm, if only to reassure Lillian, who was scared out of her wits. The girl's hyperventilating wasn't an act. Kara had seen enough faked fear and panic attacks—on the part of witnesses, clients, even young attorneys before a big trial—to recognize the difference.
    Staying low, she followed Lillian to the bedroom. Henry was on his knees at the window, peering over the sill in the dark, an angle of light from outside catching his pale face. He silently motioned for Kara and his sister to join him.
    "I wasn't going to tell you," he whispered when Kara crouched next to him. "I didn't want to scare you,
    but Lillian wouldn't listen. He's out there."
    "Who, Henry?" Kara asked.
    "Do you see the black car? That's him."
    She looked up past the neighbor's house, craning her neck, and saw a black sedan parked on the street. Someone was in the front seat, but she couldn't tell if it was a man or woman.
    "Look," Lillian said, kneeling down on Kara's other side, "he's smoking a cigarette."
    Kara frowned. "I can't see the cigarette never mind who's in the car. How do you two know he's from the ranch?"
    "He got out of the car a few minutes ago," Henry said. "He stared right at your house. Lillian and I got a good look at him, didn't we, Lil?"
    "Uh-huh. He was under the streetlight."
    "Okay, I believe you," Kara said. "So who is he?"
    Henry sat down on the floor, leaning back against the wall under the window with his knees tucked up under his chin. Kara noticed a smattering of small scratches and bruises on his tanned bare legs, a twelve-year-old at summer's end. How had his and Lillian's summer come to this?
    "We saw him watching us at the ranch," he said. "Well, I did, and I warned Lillian to look out for him. He showed up the first of this week."
    "Are you sure he wasn't an employee? He didn't introduce himself—"
    "Sometimes he had on a disguise," Lillian said. "I saw him with a fake mustache. I thought he looked stupid."
    A fake mustache. It could have been another man altogether and Lillian had just leaped to the conclusion it was her