Accompanying Alice Read Online Free PDF Page A

in one of the speakers weeks ago, coupled with the weapon and the thumb drive, would tie this case into a tight neat bundle that would bring arrests within the week.
    If he could stay alive, that is.
    To Alice, who’d been raised to balance life between the Ten Commandments and the West Point cadet code, and who read the newspapers with an eye entirely focused on what books to stock in the store and what movie titles to recommend, and as little as possible on police cases and politics, the story was unbelievable. Things like this didn’t happen in her world. Her life was forever bounded by the petty and the sensible, honed by soapbox family drama and—
    She stopped to push open the door and let herself in, then shut it, leaning against it as though to keep the world at bay, automatically slapping the dead bolt into place and securing the chain. Maybe her sister Sam had been right yesterday when she’d said Alice could use an attitude overhaul. Or, more appropriately, a life overhaul. Whichever, Alice would have to think about it later. Because, if what Gabriel said was true, then the entire county’s judicial system was on
the rocks—and she’d brought the evidence home with her for a shower, a shave and tea.
    As if she needed this on top of worrying about her daughters, Grace’s wedding, that damned investment broker and all the seed pearls she had left to sew onto Grace’s veil. And she’d thought last week was the worst of her life. Ha! But she supposed that only went to prove how relative worst could be. At least last week the “plethora of evil things,” as her grandmother used to say, had only happened one per day, instead of one every five minutes. Just as soon as she could scare up the energy, she meant to have a serious talk with whoever dealt out lives and demand recompense for the past few days of hers. Surely in the heavenly scheme of things she was entitled to a reduction in purgatory time. If not for last week, then at least for today?
    A clear conscience is payment enough, her mother whispered wisely to her thoughts, and Alice sighed. Wasn’t that exactly what she’d been trying to teach Allyn and Rebecca for the past eighteen years? Wasn’t conscience what she now prayed would carry them through their reckless rush to come of age? And wasn’t conscience exactly what had landed her in the middle of this terrible, horrible day?
    Nothing’s black and white, Allie, her father’s voice assured her. Your mother forgot to tell you there are always shades of gray.
    Shades of gray, Alice humphed wryly. Shades of mud would be more like it. Mud-colored choices, mud-spattered conflicts, mud-murky days, mud-coated bodies-speaking of which...
    She turned to the mud-coated body she’d assumed was right beside her, but the space was vacant. Her eyes lit. Maybe it had all been a dream. Maybe she’d never left the house this morning. Maybe between daily stress and her occasionally rabid imagination she was only in the midst of a PMS breakdown. What luck medication was available to take care of these things—
    Someone kicked the wooden door behind her. Whispering a word she’d never used before Allyn and Rebecca had left home, Alice undid all the locks and yanked open the door.
    Looking something like a drowned Big Foot, the being on her porch hefted one of his speakers and lifted a soggy hairy upper lip at her. “Fuller Brush Man,” he said.
    With a huff of irritation, Alice flung the door aside and grabbed a stack of newspapers from beneath the chair beside it. “Why can’t you and my parents leave me alone?”
    Gabriel stepped into the house and set the speaker on the floor, taking the non sequitur in stride. “Trouble with authority figures?” he asked.
    “I—” Alice shut her mouth and took a breath, then gave him her mother’s best I-am-not-going-to-rise-to-that-despite-untold-provocation face and opened newspaper sections, piling them on the carpet. “Drip on these.”
    Obligingly Gabriel