Storm Warning Read Online Free PDF Page A

and take off your coats.” May as well get it over with. If she didn’t answer their questions now, she’d only have to do it tomorrow.
    “What happened?” Robbie shook the rain off his slicker and hung it on the back of the door.
    Sorcha avoided his eyes by going to the unlit fireplace and fingering one of the abalone shells she’d collected on a trip to New Zealand. “I cut along the beach on the way back from my run and found a body in the big rock pool.”
    The mirror above the mantle showed her relatives exchanging a worried glance, as if concerned about her mental health.
    Digging her fingernails into the palms of her hands, she grounded herself. “I pulled him out and someone helped me get him up the beach.”
    “The Yank?” Derision was palpable in Uncle Angus’s tone. He scratched his whiskered chin.
    “Just some guy.” She shrugged and left it at that. She didn’t want to talk about Ben Foley or think about the way he’d looked at her with that cold, calculating precision. There was something much more important on her mind. While her courage held, she asked, “Angus, did they ever find out what happened…that day?”
    His watery blue eyes swept over her in horror.
    “To Daddy?” Her voice trailed to a whisper
    Angus sent a glare to Robbie, pinching his lips up tight. “Do you not remember, lass?”
    She only remembered waking up to a nightmare that never ended.
    The old man rubbed his straggly gray hair. “I don’t know what to tell you, lass,” he said finally. “No one knows exactly what happened that day, except maybe Iain himself.” His old eyes crinkled with sadness. “And he’s not saying.”
    Isn’t he?
    “Was it a blond laddie you found today? Young, early twenties?” Always the peacemaker, Robbie changed the subject. Both men volunteered on the lifeboats. They knew most of the corpses unaccounted for in the Firth of Forth.
    “Yes, he was blond.” She shivered beneath the thick sweatshirt and caught the elusive scent of the American. Her head jerked up. She didn’t want to think about him. Cold eyes, cold heart.
    “It’ll be the McCabe boy,” Angus declared.
    Robbie nodded, the corners of his mouth dragged down with sadness. “Aye.”
    She rubbed her arms to fight the chill. “I need to find out when the funeral is. I want to attend.” The connection to the dead boy went deep and she needed to see him laid to rest.
    “I’ll come with you if I’m not working, or you can borrow the van.” Robbie took her hand. “Poor bugger threw himself off the Forth Road Bridge last night after a row with his girlfriend.”
    Such a waste. She hadn’t known him, but suicide was such a waste. It left a path of untold destruction in its wake.
    “A pretty terminal solution if you ask me.” Kevin had crept silently down the stairs. His laughter boomed off the ceiling, inappropriate and cruel given the circumstances. “Should have just gotten himself a new girlfriend.”
    The silence throbbed with tension.
    “Not everyone would feel that way.” Robbie gathered himself up to his full gangly height, anger moving through his soft brown eyes.
    Carolyn, minus the apron, carried a tray of tea out of the kitchen, but Angus and Robbie were busy retrieving their coats. “You’re not leaving are you?” she asked.
    Kevin threw his arm over Carolyn’s shoulder, rattling cups and spilling tea. The brunette grimaced, then bit her lip. Sorcha grabbed the tray and placed it on the coffee table before anyone got scalded.
    “Aye, we’re off.” Robbie looked from Kevin to Carolyn, disappointment obvious as his lips flatlined. Sorcha felt guilty. She should have warned him.
    “We’ll be seeing you then.” Angus kissed Sorcha’s cheek and gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Look after yourself, lass. Come on, Robbie lad.”
    Robbie gave Sorcha a hug and a rueful smile. “At least tell me he’s rich and drives a Porsche?” he whispered close to her ear.
    “Unfortunately not ,” she murmured,