Swimsuit Read Online Free PDF

thousand. No, no, take it. You could need it when you get there.
     Cabs and whatever. Levon, take it.”
    Fierce hugs were exchanged and wishes for a safe flight and love-you’s rang out loudly in the morning stillness. When Cissy
     and David’s front door closed, Levon told Barb to strap in.
    He backed the Suburban out of the drive, then turned onto Burkett Road, heading toward Gerald R. Ford International Airport,
     ramping the car up to ninety on the straightaway.
    “Slow down, Levon.”
    “Okay.”
    But he kept his foot on the gas, driving fast into the star field of snow that somehow kept his mind balanced on the brink
     of terror rather than letting it topple into the abyss.
    “I’ll call the bank when we change planes in L.A.,” Levon said. “Talk to Bill Macchio, get a loan started against the house
     in case we need cash.”
    He saw tears dropping from Barb’s face into her lap, heard the click of her fingernails tapping on her BlackBerry, sending
     text messages to everyone in the family, to her friends, to her job. To Kim.
    Barb called Kim’s cell phone again as Levon parked the car, held up the phone so Levon could hear the mechanical voice saying,
     “The mailbox belonging to —
Kim McDaniels —
is full. No messages can be left at this time.”

Chapter 13
    THE MCDANIELSES HOPSCOTCHED by air from Grand Rapids to Chicago and from there to their wait-listed flight to Los Angeles,
     which connected just in time to their flight to Honolulu. Once in Honolulu, they ran through the airport, tickets and IDs
     in their hands, making Island Air’s turbo prop plane. They were the last people on, settling into their bulkhead seats before
     the doors to the puddle jumper closed with a startling bang.
    They were now only forty minutes from Maui.
    Only forty minutes from Kim.
    Since leaving Grand Rapids, Barbara and Levon had slept in snatches. So much time had elapsed since the phone call that it
     was starting to feel unreal.
    They now spun the idea that after Kim had given them hell for coming there, they’d be laughing about all of this, showing
     off a snapshot of Kim with that “oh, please” look on her face and standing between her parents, all of them wearing leis,
     typical happy tourists in Hawaii.
    And then they’d swing back to their fear.
    Where was Kim? Why couldn’t they reach her? Why was there no return call from her on their home phone or Levon’s cell?
    As the airplane sailed above the clouds, Barb said, “I’ve been thinking about the bike.”
    Levon nodded, took her hand.
    What they called “the bike” had started with another terrible phone call, seven years ago, this time from the police. Kim
     had been fourteen. She’d been riding her bike after school, wearing a muffler around her neck. The end of the scarf, whipping
     back behind her, got wrapped around the rear wheel, choking Kim, pulling her off the bike and hurling her onto the roadside.
    A woman driving along saw the bike in the road, pulled up, and found Kim lying up against a tree, unconscious. That woman,
     Anne Clohessy, had called 911, and when the ambulance came, the EMTs couldn’t get Kim to come back to consciousness.
    Her brain had been deprived of oxygen, the doctors said. She was in a coma. The hospital’s posturing told Barb that it might
     be irreversible.
    By the time Levon had been reached at the office, Kim had been medevaced to a trauma unit in Chicago. He and Barb had driven
     three hours, got to the hospital, and found their daughter in intensive care, groggy but awake, a terrible bruise around her
     neck, as blue as the scarf that nearly killed her.
    But she was alive. She wasn’t back to a hundred percent yet, but she’d be fine.
    “It was weird inside my head,” Kimmy had said then. “It was like dreaming, only much more real. I heard Father Marty talking
     to me like he was sitting on the end of the bed.”
    “What did he say, sweetheart?” Barb had asked.
    “He said, ‘I’m glad you were