Stalked Read Online Free PDF

like an invading army on the other side of the dune. He followed the snowy trail behind their 1890s-era cottage up the slope toward the shoreline, where he was face-to-face with the muddy waves rolling onto the sand. There wasn’t much beach to be seen now, just a gray sheet of ice stretched over the sand like a boardwalk. Stripped, bare tree trunks littered the shore, washed up after months of floating with the waves.
    The wild rye grass on top of the slope formed a wavy auburn wall. Snow and wet sand mingled at his feet like melted marshmallow running over chocolate ice cream. He sucked in cold, fresh air. To the west, he could see the fog-ringed lights of Duluth climbing sharply up the hillside from the lake. On his right, the Point peninsula stretched for another mile, and on the other side of the open water, a gauzy lighthouse beam circled from the Wisconsin shore. The sun would be dawning soon, but the clouds were so thick over the city that he would have to take it on faith that the sun was still up there, giving warmth.
    He couldn’t escape a feeling of loss and loneliness when he came here. All of the important people from his past were long gone. He had grown up on the North Shore and in the course of his life had lost his parents and then his wife of twenty years here. He had never missed having children while Cindy was alive, but there were days when he regretted that he had no reminders of her other than fading memories. Staring at the angry waves, he thought of his father, too, who had lost his life to the lake when Stride was a teenager. He often imagined his father’s ore boat, shouldering through the deep, cold troughs, out of sight of land. You just never knew when a rogue wave could reach up and snatch someone away. They never recovered his body.
    He wondered if it was true that you couldn’t go home again. That was what he was trying to do. For years, he had lived on the Point with Cindy, but he had moved away after his second marriage and always regretted it. That marriage lasted only three years and was a mistake from the beginning, which he realized when he met and fell in love with Serena. When she came back to Duluth with him from Las Vegas last year, they bought a house out on the Point again, and he was back where he had spent most of his life. He felt renewed, but his only worry was that he would spend too much of his time living in the past.
    He heard the crunch of snow behind him and turned to see Serena climbing the slope. Her black hair was loose and uncombed. She had a grace and beauty about her even when her body was buried in a heavy coat and her long legs were up to their knees in drifts. She joined him without saying anything, and they stood watching the lake and feeling the brittle morning air make its way under their skin. The cold made her face flush pink. She wasn’t wearing makeup.
    “I know you don’t want to hear this,” Serena told him quietly, “but Maggie could have done it.”
    Stride’s face hardened into a mask, and he kicked his boots in the wet sand. “No way.”
    “I’m not saying she did do it, but she’s been on an emotional roller coaster for a year. Everyone has a breaking point.”
    “I know all that, but she says she’s innocent.”
    “What does Abel think?”
    “Teitscher? He’s already got a target painted on her chest. I’m worried what he’ll find when he starts digging.”
    “Like what?”
    “I think Maggie and Eric were having big problems.”
    Serena showed no surprise. “She’s had three miscarriages in eighteen months, Jonny. You don’t think that plays hell with your emotions?”
    “I know it does, but if their marriage was in trouble, it gives her a motive. Particularly because of Eric’s money.” He added, “Abel also thinks that Maggie is hiding something, and I think he’s right.”
    “Do you know what it is?”
    “No.”
    Serena slung her arm through his. “Listen, Maggie asked me something a couple of months ago. I