Unforgivable Read Online Free PDF Page A

windows in the last couple years, probably the Atlanta company that owned it. Sometimes kids partied there, and Katie picked up the garbage. She couldn’t bear to see the place trashed up.
    The sound grew louder, the high-pitched whining creeping up her spine. If someone hired by the company was working on the house, why after dark? And why didn’t anyone know about it? The city council had been trying to buy the property the house was on, but the company never responded.
    Unease skittered along her nerves when she spotted the light through the trees. Just an innocuous twinkle through the trees as she moved through the dark. The saw ground through another length of board and faded into silence again. Then the staccato sound of hammering. Not enough sound for many people to be making. Her mother’s warnings echoed in her mind: Stay away from strangers. Don ’ t trust anyone. As often as she’d heard that during her first nine years, she’d never had reason to be afraid of anyone. This was Flatlands, a quiet town established in the early eighteen hundreds that was separated from the surrounding towns by acres of forest. Folks spent their whole lives here. Nothing bad ever happened in Flatlands.
    Nevertheless, the murder mysteries she liked to indulge in helped create a scene in her mind of illegal activities being carried out in the night, of the innocent person who stumbles across them and pays with their life. Well, she sure wasn’t going to gasp in surprise or trip over a root and give herself away. 
    Even the moonlight was obliterated by the trees. Massive trunks covered in etched bark were spaced farther apart now. The thick canopy of leaves left the ground barren of growth. Something cool whispered past her cheek. She stopped, holding her breath before she realized what it was: a strand of the ivy. 
    She saw the house first, washed in light and rising out of the distance. Music floated through the air, a rock and roll station that faded in and out. Pressing herself against one of the rough trunks, she peered around it. Sawhorses were set up just outside the front door, a door that was now leaning against one of the massive columns. Three portable lights washed the front of the house and the work area in brightness. A black and gold sport utility vehicle was parked nearby, tailgate open. She got as close as she could to the house, which was closely guarded by the oaks surrounding it. 
    A man walked out carrying a length of wood. Her heart reacted first, not a startled jump but a different kind of jolt. He was tall and lean, his brown wavy hair reaching just past his collar. A blue handkerchief worked as a headband. He wore jeans and a long-sleeved plaid shirt that was left unbuttoned. She glimpsed a hard chest and taut stomach as the shirt opened with his movements.
    Silas , a voice whispered in her head.
    He stopped just short of the circular saw and, amazingly, looked into the trees surrounding the house. She hadn’t made a sound, except a startled gasp in her mind. He set the wood against the sawhorses and turned down the radio. And he kept searching.
    She was able to do nothing more than press closer against the tree. 
    Silas.
    Could it be him, after all this time? It seemed a dream, a crazy dream that spun her insides and made breathing difficult. The last time she’d seen him had haunted her, Silas being taken away. Even though he had been cleared of suspicion in his father’s death, he’d still been an orphaned minor. Katie had pleaded with the Emersons to take him. The two Emerson boys who went to school with Silas said he was strange, unfriendly, that he’d probably killed his father, and no way would they live with Spooky Silas. So he’d been relegated to state protective services, and Katie had never seen him again.
    Spooky and mysterious, yet tender and compassionate. He’d touched her little girl soul and left an imprint that hadn’t quite gone away.
    Silas walked toward the edge of the