Wild Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

the beach, she barely heard it. Now she heard it change to a higher note, excited and welcoming. She looked up. Two dark-garbed figures were walking along the water, slowly coming toward them.
    "Oh, Philip, it's him," she breathed, jumping up from the sandy blanket. "The lost man."
    Philip stood, too. "I've never seen him up close before."
    Instinctively they both started toward Sam, who stood stock-still, staring intently, rudely, ignoring the waves breaking over his calves. The dog dashed ahead, skidded to a halt just shy of the two approaching men, and began to run around them in excited circles.
    Sam was safe, Sydney knew that, but by the time she drew level with him she was out of breath from rushing, and she put both hands on his shoulders from behind, to keep him from going any closer.
    "Hi," popped out of his mouth as if he were greeting a school chum. But he was nervous; she could tell by the quaver in his voice. He'd never been this close to the lost man either.
    Hector jumped up on the man's legs, leaving wet sand all over his dark trousers. He was bent over, head down, gently squeezing the pup's floppy ears and letting him slobber all over his hands.
    "That's Hector," Sam piped up. "He's a hound dog. He's one year old. I'm Sam Winter. What's your name?"
    Hector finally backed off, and the man straightened slowly to his full height. Why, Sydney thought, he's just a boy. He was tall and too thin, and his blue-black hair had been cut very badly, as if with a dull-bladed knife. She remembered his face from the photographs, the white scar on his cheek, his strong nose, his wide, hard mouth, expressive even though he wasn't smiling. His clothes— black coat and trousers, a white shirt with a celluloid collar—looked strange, unnatural, and not just because they didn't fit him. Under the too-short cuffs of his pants, his bare white ankles showed above a pair of bulky old brogans.
    "He don't understand you, son," O'Fallon explained, grinning indulgently at Sydney and Philip. He was using Sam to make it seem as if they were all together, the adults against the child. Sydney resented him, but not only for that. O'Fallon had a habit of leering at her when they passed on the grounds or in the house, where he took his meals with the servants. His broad, hulking, prizefighter's body intimidated her. She didn't like him. Most of all, she didn't like his treatment of the man he was only supposed to be preventing from running away. She knew for a fact that he kept a policeman's truncheon in his belt and a coil of rope in his pocket.
    "How do you know? Maybe he just doesn't want to talk to you." Sam, normally polite, didn't like O'Fallon either.
    The big man pretended to laugh heartily. "That's a good one, that is! Might be yer right, but I doubt it. I'm thinkin' 'is brain's about the size o' that dog's, there." He laughed again, but nobody joined in. They were offended, not only on the man's part, but also on Hector's.
    The man, who had been peering at Sam with great interest, lifted his gaze to Sydney. Immediately she saw that she'd been wrong—he was anything but a boy. His face had a superficial innocence, but that was only a matter of the arrangement of his features. It was his eyes that gave him away. She had thought they were gray or silver from the photographs, but they were pale, pale green, and as clear as the light on the lake in the morning. There was a look in them, a kind of knowing . . . something old and uncanny. Not like anything she'd ever seen before. She couldn't look away.
    "That your professional opinion?" Philip asked lightly, but Sydney heard the distaste in his casual tone. Now it was unanimous: they all disliked O'Fallon.
    "Here. Look." Sam pulled something out of his pocket. "You can have it if you want." He held the object out toward the man, who, after a startled second, bent over at the waist to see what it was. "It's a puppet, see? You put it on your finger like this, and then you play with