Hunted Read Online Free PDF Page B

far off land of sunshine and endless waters. 
    It almost felt strange that everything seemed…the same.  It almost seemed as though things should be different, darker.  There should be storm clouds hovering low overhead and thunder should be booming over the tree tops.  Nothing should be bright or cheerful or pleasant.
    But, she’d felt this way before, when her mom had passed away.  It had seemed as if all the world should look as dark as she felt.  But, that feeling had passed.  Lanie knew it would pass this time, too.  Once everything had been settled and she’d gotten to say goodbye to her friend, that feeling would fade.
    Trying to push the dark thoughts away for a few minutes, Lanie tried to focus on the trees that were barely tinged with color and the powdery blue sky that was swept with wisps of lacy clouds, but her mind began to drift away from those things and toward a ruggedly beautiful face and a mop of perfectly messy wheat colored hair, which instantly filled her with a sense of guilt. 
    Her friend was…gone…and she was daydreaming of a cute guy?   
    She felt as if she was betraying Stacy somehow, though she tried to push that thought away, too.  She knew she really wasn’t being disloyal to her friend by thinking about something else.  Stacy wouldn’t want her to obsess over what had happened and let it drag her down into despair.  She wouldn’t want Stacy to do that if things were reversed.  She’d want Stacy to move on and…live.
    Lanie felt a sudden surge of anger rise up inside her.  She couldn’t believe that someone would do something like that to Stacy Miller!  Stacy was the sweetest, most innocent girl Lanie knew.  She still slept with her stuffed animals, for pity’s sake!  She’d never had a boyfriend, she’d never even been kissed!  She blushed when someone said a curse word, she always said please and thank you.  There was no good reason for someone to want to…do that…to Stacy Miller!  She didn’t have an enemy in the world.  Not one.  Which was unusual for a girl who lived in a small town and who also happened to look like Stacy Miller.
    Stacy was…had been…beautiful.  Golden hair, pink cheeks, large hazel eyes, and the svelte figure of a cheerleader.  Yet, she had not one adversary.  She wasn’t from the most wealthy family and she seemed to know better than to step on the toes of the girls who were higher up on the totem pole, the girls who dated the football players and the popular guys.  Though, any of those boys would have dated Stacy if she’d only said yes to them.  But, she didn’t.  She was beautiful, but also smart enough to know her place in the pecking order at Fells Pointe High. 
    Lanie simply could not imagine who would want to hurt her or why.  It would have made her feel slightly better to think that it was someone Stacy didn’t know, a shadowy and faceless stranger that had swooped in from out of the darkness to do such an unspeakable thing to such an innocent girl, but she knew that wasn’t all that likely.  Other than a few people passing through on their way to someplace else, there were no shadowy strangers in Fells Pointe. 
    It could have been someone just driving through town that had spotted the girl and decided she would be their next…victim, so they’d seized the opportunity, had left her in the park, and then driven on their way.  However, she was the daughter of the Sheriff and she knew the statistics.  Nearly fifty percent of homicides involving females were committed by family members or other acquaintances.  Odds were, Stacy was killed by someone she was at least familiar with.  And that was the most bothersome thing of all.  Someone who lived in Fells Pointe, someone who ate chili fries at The Pub, someone who walked through the Town Square and bought the morning paper from Mr. Wallace’s Newsstand, had killed Stacy. 
    And that person, that friend or that neighbor, was still walking around town