Read Online Whisper of Revenge (A Cape Trouble Novel Book 4) by Janice Kay Johnson - Free Book Online Page A

grumbled.
    Unsurprised by Campbell’s priorities, Elias wasn’t even sure
what he said in reply.  Fortunately, Campbell immediately presented Elias with
his back.  The antipathy was definitely mutual.
    Sipping his coffee, Elias hovered even though there wasn’t a
chance of Hannah breaking away.  He felt foolish, lingering like this when he’d
be seeing her tonight anyway.  About to leave, he let curiousity make him
pause.  Even as she waited on customers in here, she was keeping a close eye on
someone in the bookstore.  A suspected shoplifter?
    Elias took a few steps to see what she did, and felt a
jolt.  Her boy sat at the low table in the kids’ section, coloring or
scribbling.  She usually brought him with her only on weekends.  Elias rarely
stopped by on Saturdays and Sundays.  With increased tourist business, she’d be
too busy for him, he’d told himself, but now realized there was another
component.  He knew nothing about kids.  The fact that she had one made him
uncomfortable.
    Now, looking at the bent head the same color as hers, he
faced an unalterable truth.  If he got involved with her, he couldn’t entirely avoid her son.
    So he dropped his almost empty cup in the trash and strolled
into the bookstore, aware of glances from a couple of browsers.  When he got
close enough, the boy heard him coming and looked up.  Hannah must drill him on
manners, because he immediately offered a polite, “Hello, Mr. Burton.”
    “Hi, Ian.  Got stuck coming to work with your mom today, did
you?”  He hoped that didn’t sound as inane to the kid as it did to him.
    But the boy’s forehead wrinkled.  “Mom made me come ’cuz
Mrs. Voight told all the parents Dustin and Polly and Natalie have lice.  Mom
had to spend ages checking my hair this morning.  She says I don’t have any,
and I’m not going back to school ’til it’s safe.”  He tipped his head to one
side, eyes a darker brown than his mother’s studying Elias.  “Did you ever have
lice?”
    He laughed, pulled out one of the child-size chairs, and
lowered himself gingerly onto it.  “Yeah, actually I did.  A couple times. 
Once when I wasn’t much older than you.  The stuff they put in your hair to
kill the lice didn’t work very well, and Mom had to do it over and over.  She
got pretty grumpy.”
    Ian giggled.
    “Then I got them again later, when I was playing youth
football.  We traded helmets around.  I guess that’s how we shared bugs.  That
time my mother shaved my head.  I barely had a stubble left.”  He ran a hand
over his hair, remembering how naked he’d felt.  “Did the trick, though.”
    The little boy rolled his eyes upward, as if trying to see
his own head.  “My hair isn’t very long.  Maybe that’s why I didn’t get lice.” 
His tone suggested he wasn’t altogether sure what lice were and was almost
sorry he hadn’t had any.  “ Dustin’s hair is almost as long as the
girls’.”
    Elias laughed again, finding himself disarmed by this kid,
who didn’t seem to have a shy bone in his body.  “What are you up to?” he
asked.
    “I’m drawing,” Ian said, very seriously.  “I’m not that
good, but I like to do it a lot.”
    “May I?”  At the boy’s shy nod, Elias turned what proved to
be a pad of decent artist’s paper to take a look at what Ian had been
concentrating so intently on.  What he saw took him aback.  The kid had an
eye.  Probably his hand wouldn’t do what he wanted it to yet.  Elias remembered
his own frustration.  It would be – what? – another couple years before Ian
would be able to write at all neatly.  That’s when, if he was still drawing,
he’d find his ability taking an astronomical leap forward.  But this…
    It wasn’t flat the way young children’s drawings usually
were.  In a crude way, he had achieved more than a single dimension.  Rather
than mindlessly drawing the usual house, stick figures, sun and maybe clouds in
the sky, he was