Cape Refuge Read Online Free PDF Page B

she whispered.
    â€œBlair.”
    She swallowed back the panic rising in her throat. “I have to hurry,” she said, moving away from him and only then realizing that she had left her car at City Hall.
    â€œThey don’t need clothes, Blair.” His voice was gentle, patient, pulling her back to reality.
    She stopped in the parking lot and looked helplessly around. A van with the words WSAV-TV pulled in, and a crew jumped out. The familiar anchor, dressed in a white shirt and tie, with sweat rings under his arms, was trying to hook up his microphone as he headed toward her.
    â€œYou can’t go in there,” Cade said. “It’s a crime scene.”
    â€œCan you tell us what happened?”
    â€œNot at this time,” Cade said, turning Blair back toward the pier.
    But Blair resisted. “Don’t you take their pictures,” she told a man emerging from the truck with a television camera. “Don’t you dare. You get back in that van and you leave. Cade, tell them—”
    â€œ Chief Cade?” the anchor asked. “Chief, could you please confirm the names of the victims? We heard on the scanner that it was Thelma and Wayne Owens.”
    â€œExcuse me,” he said and firmly escorted Blair away from them.
    â€œStop them, Cade,” she said. “Don’t let them put my parents on the news. Not like that.”
    Cade left her at the bench where she had sat moments before, but she couldn’t stay put; she followed him, a few steps behind, as he went through the side door of the warehouse again. Her eyes swept the room—the pews she had squirmed on as a child, writing notes to her sister, then swearing to her father that they were notes on his sermons. Her gaze locked on the piano on which their mother had taught Morgan and her to play. Blair had hated to practice, and eventually Thelma had given up and let her quit. But Morgan, always the dutiful daughter, had become almost as good at the keyboard as their mother.
    Blair wished now that she hadn’t quit playing. It had meant so much to her mother for her to learn. She looked at the keys—and at the bare rectangle at the center of the piano above the keys, where an old mirror had once hung, for who knows what reason. Her mother had taken it off when Blair had started to play, because the sight of her own reflection was too distracting to Blair. Mirrors had never been her friends, and her mother had helped her avoid them.
    The front door opened, and the Chatham County medical examiner came into the room. She watched as he walked toward the crowd of officers across the room. They stepped away from the body as the man stooped next to them . . .
    . . . and as she caught the first glimpse of their lifeless bodies, her stomach lurched. She stumbled to the edge of the boardwalk and threw up into the water.

 
C H A P T E R
4
    C ade wiped the sweat from his brow and tried to remain objective as the medical examiner studied Thelma Owens’s wound. Her head rolled back; her chin and neck and chest were covered with blood, and her eyes were open, frozen in some silent horror. He couldn’t be emotional now. He had to stay focused.
    A metal pin protruded from the back of her neck, straight out her throat. “That’s a bulletnose point,” Cade said. “From a speargun.”
    The examiner nodded. “Looks like it. Hit him from the front.” He started to turn Wayne over, and Cade turned away. He needed some air, he thought. He walked to the side door, opposite the one where Jonathan, Morgan, and Blair had been sitting, and stepped out onto the wharf.
    Billy followed him out. “You okay, Chief?”
    â€œYeah,” he said. “Look, I need to get somebody out to confiscate all the spearguns on the island, so we can determine if they were the murder weapon. There’re thirty members in the diving club, including me.” He swallowed, tried to steady his breathing.