Dead Ringers 1: Illusion Read Online Free PDF Page B

The other employee has arms covered with tattoos. He says something to Porter and nods at me. They both stare. Then I get it. The Mouth of Midway Beach has struck again.
    “I’m gonna let Maia have it.”
    “Don’t be too hard on her. She’s worried about you. We all are.” Hunter is no longer smiling. “How ya doin’? You know, since that thing last winter.”
    It’s the first time he’s brought up the forty-eight hours I lost. Not surprising. I can count on one hand the number of times Hunter’s said anything at all to me since February.
    “I’m fine.” I’m not sure if I’m trying to reassure Hunter or myself, maybe a little of both.
    “I hope you are.” He lowers his head. “Hey, if you need someone to talk to, call my aunt. I should have told you about her before. She’s in practice with two other women. Their website is psychthree.com.”
    The aunt he lives with is a psychiatrist. The only way this could get worse is if my mother made an appointment for me with her. I shift my weight from one pretty leg to the other. Hunter’s gaze doesn’t dip.
    Maia comes toward us, long black hair swinging behind her with a yellow chrysanthemum tucked behind her right ear. The yellow T-shirt the arcade employees wear is even uglier than the orange carnival T-shirt. Her skin looks sallow in the artificial arcade lighting. “Oh, hey, Jade.”
    She sounds irritated. It takes me a moment to remember her outburst. Did that really happen only yesterday?
    Maia turns to Hunter, her face a cool mask. She’s always annoyed at him. She and Hunter were an item back in the eleventh grade when he first moved to town. Their relationship only lasted a few months before she dumped him for reasons unknown. Since then, she barely speaks to him, except, it seems, to spread gossip about me. “Adair’s almost an hour late. Is she still sick?”
    My onetime friend Adair Adams is Hunter’s current girlfriend. They’ve been dating since shortly after I gushed to her about that kiss on the beach.
    “No clue,” Hunter says.
    “Her home phone went to voicemail.”
    “Yeah, she never answers that one. And her parents are vacationing in Europe.”
    “I couldn’t get her on her cell, either.”
    “She might have it turned off,” Hunter says. “She does that sometimes.”
    “I’ll cover for her this time but she’s on her own if it happens again. Tell her that, okay?” Maia stomps away without waiting for a response.
    Hunter finishes propping open the doors, securing them with the wedges.
    The breeze from the ocean seems to blow right through me. It’s not cold, but I shiver. “When was the last time anyone saw Adair?”
    His shoulders move up and down. “I don’t know.”
    “When was the last time you saw her?”
    “About noon yesterday, I guess. We both had the day shift. She went home sick after a couple hours.”
    “So she’s missing?”
    Like I was for those forty-eight hours.
    “Whoa.” Hunter puts up a hand. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
    “But if she’s feeling crappy, shouldn’t she be at home? How do you know if she even got there?” I pull my cell from the pocket of my shorts. “Someone needs to track her down and make sure she’s safe. I think I’ve still got her number in here.”
    “She won’t answer,” he says. “Like I said, I think she turned off her cell. She does that when she’s playing hard to get. She was never sick, okay? She left work because we had a fight.”
    That puts a different spin on things but only slightly. The fact remains that nobody has seen Adair in more than twenty-four hours. “Where is she then?”
    “She texted me yesterday that she was going to her dad’s cabin.”
    A chill rattles through me. I know of the cabin. When Adair and I were friends, we’d gone there together once when her father asked her to bring him the bowhunting gear he’d forgotten. It was about thirty miles northwest of Midway Beach in a coastal forest called Wilder Woods.
    The memory of