Whisper of Evil Read Online Free PDF Page B

about these days. With four suspicious—and unsolved—deaths in the last eight months, we all know where your… attention needs to be focused."
    Ethan rose as well and didn't offer to shake hands. "I don't need you to remind me what my job is." As Max turned away, he added in the same pleasant tone, "Oh—Max? I did tell you not to leave town, didn't I?"
    "You told me. And you don't have to worry. I'm not going anywhere."
    "Make sure you don't."
    All too aware that the sheriff was determined to get the last word no matter what, Max simply nodded and left the office. He hadn't realized how tense he'd been until he was outside, around the corner, and out of sight of that office window and found himself shifting his shoulders in a half-conscious effort to relax.
    Damn Ethan Cole.
    Bad enough to watch a boy you'd liked grow up into a man you didn't; give that man a badge and almost unlimited authority, not to mention a grudge, and things could get ugly in a hurry.
    Trying to shake off a useless bitterness, Max walked to where he'd left his track parked and got in. He started the engine but didn't put it in gear right away. Instead, he found himself thinking about Nell. Again.
    All last night, listening to storms rumbling around and through Silence, he had tossed and turned and thought about Nell. Wondered. What sort of life had she made for herself in the last dozen years? Why had she failed to come home even for the funerals of her father and grandmother? What lay behind Hailey's odd, brittle smile whenever the subject of her younger sister had come up?
    Most of all, he had wondered if any other man had managed to get close to her even once.
    She had changed, that had been plain to see. Still beautiful, he hadn't lied to Ethan about that. But the incredible green eyes that he remembered with rather terrifying intensity were guarded and wary now, and there was an air of stillness, of composure, about her that had not been present years before.
    She had been anything but still back then.
    Max thought of the sixteen-year-old girl he had first noticed that hot summer day nearly fourteen years ago, riding a little roan mare bareback, her indecently short shorts baring most of her long, tanned legs and the white cotton blouse she wore far too sheer for his peace of mind. She had seemed wild to him, a little fey, her smile uncertain and her sudden, almost uncontrolled laughter quicksilver in the heavy, damp air. Her honey-colored hair had swung free about her shoulders, glistening in the sunlight, and her wide green eyes had stared at him with a strange look of shock, of… recognition.
    Half eager, half fearful.
    Max shook off the memory of that haunting look and grimly put the truck in gear. Enough. Enough of this. Nell Gallagher was back home just long enough to collect a few photographs and dolls from her childhood, and then she'd leave Silence for good.
    He wasn't fool enough to get involved with her.
    "Not this time," he heard himself mutter. "Not again."
    The house roused surprisingly few memories in her, good or bad, possibly because it had been heavily redecorated since she'd last seen it. It was easy to see Hailey's preferences in the dark fabrics and patterned wallpaper most of the rooms boasted, and in fact the sense of her sister was almost overpowering.
    It made Nell uncomfortable in a way she hadn't ex-
    WHISPER OF EVIL
    pected, and that as much as anything else eventually drove her out of the house later that morning.
    The Gallagher house sat on property that had once, long ago, been a thriving sugarcane plantation. Over the years, land had been sold off, and what farming was done on the remaining family property was handled by tenant farmers, most of them raising soybeans and sweet potatoes. What family wealth still existed in the last twenty-five years had consisted of income from the tenant farmers and dividends from Adam Gallagher's highly successful ventures into the stock market.
    There had almost always been