Dark to Mortal Eyes Read Online Free PDF Page B

dirt bag. Had his thrills, but wants zero responsibility. Like I care
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    Scooter leaned back on the log. “Whaddya say? Should we turn this thing in?” He rolled up his poncho, rubbed the canister he’d concealed on his lap. “Could be some cold, hard cash in it for us, a reward. You never know.”
    “Scooter!” Last night’s fears returned in a rush. “What’re you doing with that?”
    “S’okay, babe. Just checkin’ things out.”
    “Could be dangerous.”
    “It says: Gift.”
    “Gift?” She snatched the object away, drew her finger over a row of faded numbers and letters. “G-I-F-T. I didn’t even notice that in the dark. Well, there’s some twisted humor for you. Looks more like an old artillery shell.”
    “The grand spankin’ mother of all bullets.”
    “What if,” she theorized, “it’s from World War II? You know, Oregon’s the only state that had war-related casualties on her own soil during the war. Soldiers used to train near here at Camp Adair. Every once in a while a farmer’ll dig up some old armament and get his picture in the paper. Think that’s what this is?”
    “Don’t know. Is that really true—what you said about Oregon, I mean?”
    “It’s not like Puget Sound’s the only place things happen.”
    “It’s where you and I hooked up, isn’t it?”
    “Ooh, good answer. Might have to give you a point for that one.”
    Three years ago they had met and formed an immediate bond that carried over into friendship, art, and love. Josee had been a freshman and Scooter, a sophomore at the University of Washington. They’d dropped out the following summer, however, convinced that college was a diploma mill devised by corporate greed to raise a working class of loan-imprisoned drones. Nope, that wasn’t for them.
    They’d formed an artists’ colony in a travel trailer on his grandmother’s lakeshore property. Word got around. Soon budding artists and musicians arrived, yearning for expression and connection, for the sense of family of which most had been deprived. Josee spent hours in the living room, leaning against the rattan couch, filling a journal with poetry and pencil sketches. Behind the trailer, Scooter crafted metal sculptures in a shed pieced together with scrap aluminum siding and two-by-fours. When his creations were complete, Josee gave them titles. Often she matched them with one of her poems. As a team, she and Scooter sought out spots to display each welded image—on the porch, on a stump facing the lake, among the trees shading the pitted drive. Together, they sold their work at local galleries and cafés. The minimal cash flow was enough to keep them afloat.
    Scooter edged forward on his perch. “Think you’ve got a point, Josee. Looks like it could be GI: government issue. Like a war relic or something. Be careful with it.”
    “Excuse me? I can take care of myself.”
    “You’re a hundred and ten pounds.”
    “And all muscle—don’t you forget it.” Though she tried to sound lighthearted,she found herself twiddling her eyebrow ring between two fingers. She considered the canister, feeling torn between the threat of the unknown and the allure of the forbidden.
    “Josee?”
    “Huh?”
    “You with me? You okay?”
    “Yep.”
    “You look like you’re off somewhere else.”
    “Did I ever tell you about my grandfather? He died a few years after World War II, or so Kara told me on the phone. Never knew him, never even met the man.” Another page, Josee brooded, missing from her scrapbook. “She sent me his picture, thought I might be interested.”
    “Yeah, you showed me, remember?”
    “But I don’t even know what killed him. Isn’t that weird? I mean, I should know something like that, shouldn’t I?”
    “Maybe it’s better you don’t.”
    “Better?”
    Scooter scratched at his bearded chin. “Sometimes the truth hurts, that’s all I’m saying.”
    “Well, thank you. Why do men feel like they have to protect me, like I need their