Tide Will Tell (Islands of Intrigue: San Juans) Read Online Free PDF Page B

kettle awaited its call to duty on the smooth black stovetop. Moving around the island, she filled the kettle at the sink, then turned on the burner and set it back down. She grabbed a bag of something called Market Spice, breathed in the to-die-for cinnamony aroma, and plunked it into a waiting mug.
    Now what? Might as well unpack while her tea water heated. She’d lived out of her ratty old backpack for far too long and was ready to take a swing at settling in, even if this home was only transitory. Now to find where the driver had left her things.
    She looped back toward the foyer, where she’d noticed a doorway off to the left of the entrance. As she walked down a short hall, she noted a bedroom and a bathroom along the way to a set of double doors at the end.
    Feeling as if she were breaking and entering, she opened the double doors. Good grief . If the guesthouse master bedroom was this plush, what must the one in the main house look like?
    With a bed practically the size of the entire room she’d briefly shared in San Francisco with two other girls, and an easy chair next to its own corner fireplace, this room could please a queen. It even had a private deck with the same stunning view as the living room. She pictured herself sitting out there leisurely finalizing wedding plans.
    Her suitcase rested on one of those expensive-looking hotel luggage stands. After an obligatory check to the inner pocket to make sure the zippered pouch she’d grown to hate was still safely tucked away, she made a snap decision to leave it there. In due time, she would decide what to do about it—tell Chase, maybe?
    No. Chase would insist on reporting it, and the last thing on earth she wanted to do was talk to the police. After the way she’d been treated—by the officers who had come to her house the time her mom had called them on her stepdad, then by the police who’d degraded the kids on the street…. And that detective in San Diego. She closed her eyes against a shudder. No. She definitely didn’t trust the police.
    Maybe she’d think twice about confiding in Chase. In the meantime, the pouch would be safe in her suitcase.
    After rezipping the inner pocket, she opened the main compartment. She removed her wedding planning binder, ran her hand across its smooth pearl white cover, and placed it on the bed. She quickly unpacked all the new clothing items she’d acquired on that shopping trip with Chase, which took up a tiny fraction of the humongous walk-in closet. Going back out to the suitcase, she contemplated. She tugged at a grey sleeve of the one remaining clothing item in her case, then quickly pulled on her It Came From Outer Space sweatshirt over her blouse. It felt like a hug from an old friend. So much had changed so quickly over the last few months, and right now a small thing like her ratty old favorite sweatshirt which she’d had since high school was more comforting than anything she could imagine.
    Well, almost anything.
    Carefully, she reached into the outside pocket of her suitcase and took out a small stack of photos. Perching on the edge of the bed, she flipped through them, one by one, smiling at each. It felt a little OCD, but she didn’t care. This was it—what was left of her childhood.
    She lingered on the last one, like always. She was long past tearing up when she looked at the shot of herself with her mom, but a brew of bittersweet emotions still stirred.
    It had been taken her sophomore year, just a few weeks before everything in her life had fallen apart. Looking at this picture, it felt as though nothing had changed, and she was standing in the front yard of their house next to her mom, wearing the vintage embroidered blouse that had been one of her favorite thrift store finds.
    She swallowed hard to prevent her throat from closing. What had happened to that blouse, along with the rest of her things when she’d left San Diego? She pictured the other girls living in the condo claiming her