Quest (Shifter Island Book 4) Read Online Free PDF Page A

with the dark green trim: Chelle, Pats, and Kim. Next door to them, Dave and Tony.
    Dave and Tony…
    They’d had a commitment ceremony the week after graduation, and Allison had stayed in town long enough to attend. Home had been only an hour away, after all, and she’d used the extra time to sort out her belongings—a lot of them went to Donnie’s blowout yard sale—give the apartment a good final cleaning, and say goodbye to a lot of her friends. They had all promised to stay in touch, of course, but… well.
    She’d said goodbye to this place with a wedding, and a wedding had brought her back.
    Now, here she was, sitting in a neighborhood that had been her home for four years, and there wasn’t a single person left here that she knew. Okay, maybe Mr. Foley down the street still lived here—he’d only been in his early seventies when she left, and in good health. And maybe Cuz Whitney was still around the corner.
    But, by and large, there were only strangers in this neighborhood now.
    You can’t go home again. Right?
    With a sigh she got to her feet and started walking again, thinking she might go as far as the edge of the college grounds. There wasn’t enough time to make a loop around campus; that would have taken another fifteen or twenty minutes, since she was ambling, not power-walking. And was there really anything there that she wanted to see? No; what she’d been interested in—even though she hadn’t decided that consciously until now—was these houses, the gardens with their sprawl of late-summer flowers, the beautiful old trees.
    And her house. Hers and Julie’s.
    Suddenly she felt incredibly old, as if she’d lived here decades ago and not just four years. Everything was the same, with just a few tiny exceptions (the color of Donnie’s house, the type of flowers in a couple of the gardens, a new fence in front of what had been Chelle’s place)—but it seemed as if a whole other person had lived here, someone with no actual connection to Allison Hayes the PR whiz except for a bunch of slightly hazy memories.
    Come on, she told herself. Cheer up. You’re just tired.
    Then she heard Julie’s voice as a whisper in the back of her mind. I thought you’d be first.
    He was so right for you.
    Tears welled up so quickly she couldn’t stop them. A couple of them spilled down her cheeks, and she swiped them away with a rough hand, hoping no one had seen, even though no one was nearby.
    You and him—that was huge.
    He was so right for you.
    There were people nearby, she told herself. That man walking the dog, whoever was unloading the rental truck, whoever was playing that music. People could be watching her from upstairs windows, wondering who she was and what had brought her here. She’d done that kind of idle snooping herself, on quiet Sunday mornings when she wasn’t quite awake yet: peering out the window at someone walking by, wondering where they were going.
    Home, she thought. I should be going home.
    Home…
    It was there, half a block ahead—the house she and Julie had called home for most of their college years. Still the same colors: white, with dark blue trim. Though a tree was blocking her view of some of it, there was the window that had been at the head of her bed, the one from which she could see most of the street. The house number was still displayed on a handmade plaque shaped like a big sunflower—some kid’s wood shop project, she had always supposed.
    And there…
    Oh, God.
    Standing in front of the house, gazing up at what had once been her window, the way he always used to do when he came to see her…
    It couldn’t be.
    But it was.
    Luca.

Five
     
    Luca had found himself unable to rest after he left the library. After gobbling down three slices of pizza from a place nearby, he’d slipped into a seldom-used parking garage, thinking he might find shelter there—as he’d done a few times during his Involvement—but the place was too damp, too dark.
    From there he