Beauty (A Midsummer Suspense Tale) Read Online Free PDF Page A

job, and she could eventually get her own place.
    Bryar breathed deeply, her heart rate calming at last.
    Outside the moon rose, and with it came shouts and giggles. She drew herself up and cracked open the window to listen over the whistling fall wind. In the distance, she spotted a group of moving figures and flashlights.
    She knew exactly where they were going—there was a path to the beach that cut through the woods behind the cottage, inaccessible by road. This late in the season, beach parties grew few and far between, but it wasn’t that cold yet and a Friday night, after all.
    Bryar debated for a moment, then closed the window and climbed off the bed. It wasn’t like she had anything else to be doing and getting out for a bit might make her feel better. Someone always had a keg and lots of liquor, maybe some weed. She was acquaintances with most of the people in town who went, and familiar faces might be nice. Occasionally some new college guys hit the parties.
    Even if the night totally sucked, it was better than hanging out in the cottage all night, confined to her room while avoiding her aunts.
    She slipped an old leather jacket over her T-shirt, and stuffed her feet into sneakers. Paused near the antique vanity in the corner, which was stacked high with records, old notebooks, and somewhere some makeup, but decided against doing anything exciting. Her long curly hair hung loose and would just get windblown anyway, and whatever makeup she had on from earlier would do. She wasn’t fussy. Just wanted a couple of drinks and to forget the argument from the evening.
    She kept the light off and eased the door open. Hopping through her window would work too but all she needed was to land in the plants outside and leave footprints everywhere. Voices sounded from the main room of the cottage, low enough that she couldn’t make out words, and water ran in the kitchen sink. It would mask her exit.
    Bryar slipped out the rear door into the night and picked her way through the yard, following the bobbing flashlights and voices in the distance, determined to see her sour mood improved if only for a few hours.
     
    ****
     
    The isolation of the house, even for just the afternoon and evening, had done wonders to relax Sawyer.
    It was the silence, probably. That and the easy laughter and conversation from Scott and Val, people he knew and trusted. He still couldn’t stop himself from glancing out the windows frequently, watching for a sign of someone, or bracing periodically like he expected a knock at the door, but little by little the tension unwound from him. They’d agreed upon no internet, no news, no phone. Val knew he still carried his and made him take it out and shut it in a drawer in his bedroom before she’d let him sit for her homemade lasagna, and he was hungry enough that he agreed to it.
    As the evening wore on, Scott and Val ended up in the hot tub with wine, and though they’d invited Sawyer, he declined. They needed a break, needed time away from him, and he was starting to feel like they were babysitters at this point.
    Instead he found himself wandering out the back door of the beach house. It was windy but still warm, fresh air coming off the water in the distance. He moved down the hill away from the house, through the combination locked gate cut in the fence out back, and beyond the bright lights burning through the windows until he was guided by the glow of the pale moon tinging the sand white. Waves rolled along the shore, restlessly. Silence stretched on in the night and he paused by the beach, closing his eyes and taking in a few breaths. He reached for his phone, remembered it was back at the house, and was glad Val made him leave it there.
    The boathouse and dock lay to his right but the keys were back at the house. Laughter spilled out into the air, somewhere to his left. He opened his eyes again and narrowed them in that direction, down the beach. Something orange glowed far off, beyond one