Copper Beach: A Dark Legacy Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

teen finished tying up the boat. Abby stepped cautiously off the gently bobbing craft onto the planked dock and looked around, wondering if she was supposed to walk to her destination.
     
    “Can I pay someone to drive me to Coppersmith’s house?” she said to Dixon.
     
    “You won’t need a lift,” Dixon said, angling his head. “Sam’s here to get you.”
     
    A chill of awareness stirred the hairs on the back of her neck. Automatically, she raised her senses and turned to watch the man who was coming toward her along the dock. His dark hair was a little too long. A pair of black-framed sunglasses shielded his eyes, but the hard-edged planes and angles of his face told her a great deal about him.
     
    It was the currents of raw power that burned in the atmosphere around Coppersmith that compelled her senses. She could literally feel the heat, both normal and paranormal, even from this distance. When he drew closer, she glimpsed a small spark of fire on his right hand.She took another look and concluded that the flash of light had been caused by sunlight glinting off the stone of his ring.
     
    Her initial shiver morphed into a charged thrill. She could not decide if she was more excited than she had ever been in her life or merely scared out of her wits. It was a classic fight–or–flight response. There was obviously more than one kind of top–of–the-line predator living here in the San Juans.
     
    She looked at Dixon. “I have one question for you, Mr. Dixon.”
     
    “Sure.”
     
    “Why are you and everyone else on the island so absolutely convinced that Sam Coppersmith did not murder that woman?”
     
    “Simple,” Dixon said. He winked. “Coppersmiths are all real smart, and Sam is probably the smartest of the bunch. If he had killed that woman, there would have been nothing at all to link her death to him. He sure as freaking hell wouldn’t have left her body in his own lab. She would have flat-out disappeared. No problem making that happen here in the islands. Lot of deep water around these parts.”
     

4
     
    “THADDEUS WEBBER INDICATED THAT YOU HAD SOME EXPERIENCE with this sort of thing,” Abby said.
    “Obsessed collectors who send online blackmail threats to innocent antiquarian book dealers?” Sam Coppersmith leaned back against his desk and folded his arms. “Can’t say that I have. But an extortionist is an extortionist. Shouldn’t be all that hard to find the one who is bothering you.”
     
    “I’m glad you’re so optimistic,” Abby said. She drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair and glanced uneasily at her watch for the third or fourth time. “Personally, I’m getting a bad feeling about this meeting. I think there may have been some mistake. Thaddeus Webber must not have understood my problem.”
     
    “Webber wouldn’t have sent you to me if he hadn’t thought you needed me.”
     
    Sam had said very little during the short drive from town. But she had known that his senses were slightly jacked for the whole tripbecause her own had been fizzing. They still were, for that matter. It was an unfamiliar sensation. She wondered if her intuition was trying to send her a warning. Or maybe she was simply sleep-deprived. Regardless, she was quite certain that Sam was assessing her, measuring her reactions, testing her in some way.
     
    Her first view of the gray stone mansion that was the Copper Beach house had not been reassuring. The place was a true gothic monstrosity. It loomed, bleak and shadowed, in a small clearing on a bluff overlooking a cove and the dark waters of the San Juans. From the outside, the windows of the old house were obsidian mirrors.
     
    She had concluded immediately that Sam and the house deserved each other. Both looked as if they belonged in another century, one in which it was considered normal for mysterious men to live in dark mansions that came equipped with attics and basements that held scary secrets.
     
    Her sense of unease had