Cape Refuge Read Online Free PDF

can take you around to the boardwalk. Or you can just sit here, or I can take you home. Whatever you want.”
    Her mouth was dry, and she found it hard to swallow. His hand was big and warm over the ice cold of hers. “I don’t know how to do this,” she whispered finally.
    He didn’t ask her what she didn’t know how to do. “None of us does, Blair.”
    She wished she had her computer with her, that she could pound on the keys and do a quick search of the Internet and come up with answers. . . . But she wouldn’t even know the questions until she got out of this car.
    She reached for the door handle, and Cade let her hand go and got out. He came around before she got the door open, and opened it for her.
    She thought of some unnamed killer walking across this parking lot, going into that building, killing her parents . . . and rage like a nuclear bomb exploded inside her.
    â€œCade, why aren’t you hunting him down? Why haven’t you caught him?”
    â€œWe’re trying, Blair. I need to be in there right now, working the scene.”
    â€œThen go,” she said through her teeth. “Stop worrying about me and go. Find him, Cade, before he gets away.”
    â€œI’ll find him, Blair. You can count on it.”
    He started into the building but stopped when he saw that she was following. “Blair, you can’t come in here.”
    She trudged forward until she was face-to-face with him, and a slow, defiant, desperate agony rose in her chest like a scream. “Get out of my way, Cade.”
    He caught her arm. “Blair, you can’t. For your own good. You can see them later, when they’ve been cleaned up. But right now—”
    She jerked past him and went into the building. An odd thought struck her: she’d never been here when they weren’t here too. It was as if the building was an extension of them, a floor built beneath them, walls built around, a roof covering them.
    Cade took her arm again. “Blair, please. Don’t do this.”
    â€œI have to see them,” she said, feeling a throbbing beginning in her temple, on the side where the flesh was coarse and scarred.
    She heard her sister wailing on the boardwalk outside the door, heard Joe McCormick urging Cade to keep Blair out. But she walked toward them, intent on seeing what some maniac had done to her parents.
    Cade took her arm gently, no longer trying to hold her back. His voice broke as he said, “Blair, if you see this, it will be stamped on your mind for the rest of your life. Let me take you outside.”
    She suddenly went weak, and Cade turned her and walked her to the side door, where Jonathan and Morgan clung together. The room seemed to tip, and shadows shifted on the walls. She was going to faint, she thought. Like some prissy little thing who couldn’t stand the sight of blood. . . .
    As Cade got her onto the pier and lowered her to a bench, she heard her sister wailing with gut-emptying anguish. She thought of her mother lying on the floor there, with people gawking and probing her. Thelma had a thing about clean clothes. She hated for anyone to see her with a stain. There was bound to be a lot of blood, which meant stains on her mother’s clothes and skin. . . . “Their clothes,” Blair said to no one in particular. “I have to get them a change of clothes.”
    She started off the pier and back toward the parking lot, wondering what her mother would want her to bring. “She’ll need a dry pair of slacks and a blouse, maybe the pink one, and some clean socks and another pair of shoes . . . underwear too. And a hairbrush . . .”
    Someone touched her arm, and she turned. She hadn’t known Cade was still with her, but there he was, looking down at her with worried eyes as his hands gripped her shoulders. “Blair, you sure you’re all right?”
    â€œI’ll be back as soon as I get them, Cade,”