Saratoga Woods 02 The Edge of the Water Read Online Free PDF

a way that her appearance alone should have made impossible. Fat cow, dyed hair, thick glasses, eye makeup like an aging rock star on drugs . . . It was all part of who she had to be on this Washington island. None of it was part of who she really was.
    Somehow Derric had managed to see that, to see the
her
beneath the
her
she was forced to present to the world. When he’d recovered from his injuries and left the hospital, he’d sought her out. He’d made her life livable in this place where she’d been left by her mother in the early autumn.
    Now in midwinter, they’d grown close. But Becca could only let him into her world just so far. It was for his own safety, but he didn’t know that and to tell him . . . ? The worm can
that
would open was so full that both of them would be overcome by its contents, and that would sink their relationship. Which, of course, would please Jenn McDaniels from the top of her head to her running shoes.
    Jenn’s thoughts had become as plain as broadcasts over the school’s PA system once Becca had removed the AUD box earphone from her ear. In the past four months, she’d grown a bit in her ability to pick up others’ random thoughts when the AUD box wasn’t blocking them with static, and these whispers—as she’d learned to call them—were helping her find her way in this place. In Jenn’s case, the whispers had allowed Becca to know from the first that the girl was determined to be her enemy. They’d locked horns on the ferry that evening of Becca’s arrival, and Becca’s interest in Derric had only made things worse. When Derric returned that interest . . . Well, that was it. She and Jenn McDaniels were oil and water. As females, they were made of the same
stuff
, but there it ended.
    Becca knew she probably shouldn’t have given the other girl any indication that she’d read her thoughts, but at the moment she was just too miserable about Derric to care. He was being unreasonable, he didn’t understand, he was making a demand she couldn’t hope to fulfill, he couldn’t see the truth, he didn’t want to know why she couldn’t tell him everything he wanted to know. . . . And all the rest, she thought wryly.
    Jenn shot her a drop-dead-now look and stalked out of the library. On her way, she stopped to have a word with Squat Cooper, and for some reason she decided an exchange of spit with poor Squat was in order because she kissed him squarely on the mouth when he looked up. He didn’t exactly push her to the floor, but he said, “Hey, wha’ the heck?” when she was finished with him.
    She said, “Later, Studboy. And I want some tongue next time,” and she laughed when he went red to his hairline.
    Becca knew what Jenn was up to: I got
my
man. She also knew it was a total lie. But that didn’t matter at the moment because the moment was really about all the things that she couldn’t tell Derric.
    • • •
    JENN HAD LEFT her computer on, still fixed to whatever Web site she’d been perusing when Becca and Derric had come into the library. Becca sat to use it, but out of curiosity she traced back through what Jenn had been studying first: an oil slick at Possession Point long ago. Whatever, Becca thought. Maybe Jenn was a budding environmentalist.
    At any rate, Becca herself had a bigger issue than an oil slick from history, and his name was Jeff Corrie. He was the reason she was on Whidbey Island. She and her mother were on the run from him. There wasn’t a day that Becca didn’t expect her stepfather to pop out of a bush as she got off the bus near her hiding place, and she’d been checking once a week to see if he was still walking around San Diego as a very free man. So far that had proved to be the case.
    She did her usual search. It had to be time, she thought, for the disappearance of Jeff’s partner Connor to be
noticed
by someone. No way was Jeff Corrie
not
involved in Connor’s vanishing act.
    The first part proved true. At long