Season of Strangers Read Online Free PDF Page A

don’t worry enough.”
    He frowned at her words and for a moment she wondered if he was more aware of his financial problems than he let on.
    She smiled faintly at the woman. “Nice to meet you, Anna. Patrick, I’ve got to run.”
    â€œI’ll see you back at the office,” he said. Julie waved and hurried off toward the posh, high-walled interior of her favorite lunching spot.
    Sometimes she imagined he watched her, though why he would when he was with a woman as beautiful as the blonde she couldn’t guess. Sometimes she pretended he was different, that he was more like his father, more like the man twenty-year-old Julie Ferris had once believed he was.
    He wasn’t. He never would be and both of them knew it. As always the thought made her sad.
    Â 
    Laura lay awake in the guest room of her sister’s Malibu beach house. The antique iron bed had been painted a dull brick red and an old-fashioned quilt served as a spread. Throw rugs covered the hardwood floors, and a wall of windows led out to a deck overlooking the sea. Before tonight, Laura had envied her sister this house on the beach, envied the privacy afforded by the hundreds of acres of the exclusive Mallory estate next door.
    Now she leaned back against her pillow, thinking tonight she wished the house was sitting on a lot in the center of the city. That it was surrounded by dozens of people, that it was the middle of the day instead of so late in the evening.
    A series of waves, loud as gunshots, crashed against the shore outside the window, but they couldn’t quite block the dense dull hum Laura could barely hear above the roar of the ocean, a noise that had settled like a weight around the two-story batten-board structure. She tried to tell herself it was only her imagination, tried to concentrate on the pounding of the surf and the old Kirk Douglas movie on the television screen, though the volume was turned so low she couldn’t really hear it.
    It was three o’clock in the morning, dark outside, a cloudy night with no moon. She had always liked staying in Julie’s guest room, but tonight the ceiling seemed lower than it usually did, the walls a little closer, the sound of the waves more irritating than soothing. Her palms were sweating, her pulse beating faster than it should have.
    â€œJulie’s right next door,” she told herself, speaking the words aloud. “All you have to do is call out and she’ll come running.” Perhaps her sister would come even without the call. If anything was wrong, Julie seemed to sense it. Her sister had a way of doing that. Julie would protect her. Just like she always did.
    Then the television set went off and the night light on the wall near the bathroom dimmed and finally sputtered out. Laura swallowed against the fear that was building in her chest.
    A whispering noise sifted down from somewhere above her. She tried to cry out, but the sound lodged tight in her throat. She tried to get up, tried to swing her legs to the side of the bed, but her body was rigid, completely unwilling to move.
    It was dark in the room, but now the darkness lifted and a blinding light filled the bedroom. Laura’s eyes slammed closed against the stab of brightness shooting into her skull. Her muscles strained to move so hard she quivered all over and arched up off the bed.
    Help me! Julie, help me! But the words remained locked in her throat and the silent scream never emerged. Then the light began to fade. She heard a noise on the stairs leading up to the deck. Small, scampering footfalls that paused outside the door.
    A strangling sensation engulfed her, a terror so great it throbbed through her body in great tormenting waves. She tried to move, but only her eyes responded, rolling in their sockets, darting wildly around the room, then fixing on the door. They were coming for her. She could feel it in every nerve ending, every fiber and cell in her body. They would take her