You Don't Want To Know Read Online Free PDF

his was irritatingly cool.
    â€œI heard you ended up in the drink,” he said, reseating his bulky form and cradling his cup. His eyes narrowed suspiciously as he stared up at her. Then again, she and Biggs had never been friends. Especially not since her brother, Kelvin’s, death nearly five years earlier. “Wanna tell me about it?”
    â€œIt’s not a crime, is it?”
    â€œTo go for a swim?” he asked. “Naaah. ’Course not. But the folks here, they were concerned.” His face was fleshy, his cheeks showing a few capillaries that had burst, his deep-set eyes intense but not unkind. He motioned to the other people in the room. “They seemed to think maybe you were having a spell of some kind, or sleepwalking.”
    â€œI called Joe,” Khloe piped in as she walked in from the porch, the new hire, Austin Dern, following after her.
    Dern had changed, too. His dark hair was wet and slicked back from his face, and he wore a long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans, faded and dry. He caught her gaze with eyes the color of slate. Again, she felt as if she’d seen him before, in that weird déjà vu way, but try as she might, she couldn’t place him.
    Khloe added, “I, uh, I thought we needed help.”
    â€œSo this is un official?” Ava asked, since Joe Biggs was Khloe’s uncle.
    Biggs kept his eyes on Ava. “I just swung by ’cause Khloe called.”
    â€œI was worried, that’s all,” Khloe interjected as Virginia, spying through the open door, scowled, grabbed a towel, and wiped her hands, then pulled the thick door to the porch shut forcefully, as if she were keeping in the heat and making sure whatever lurked outside didn’t get the chance to slip in.
    Just swung by on a damned county-issued sheriff’s department boat on a foggy night? Because a relative called? Oh, sure. Ava wasn’t buying it. Even Virginia, now at the sink again, cast a disbelieving look over her shoulder.
    Khloe seemed a little less prickly as she said, “Come on, Ava, if the roles were reversed and I ran outside in the middle of the night and jumped into the bay in November, you would have panicked, too. It’s not like when we were kids and snuck out to go skinny-dipping in the damned moonlight!”
    In her mind’s eye, Ava saw them as they had been, years before, streaking down to the water’s edge as the moon cast a shimmering beacon of light across the calm sea. She and Khloe and Kelvin . . . God, what she would give to feel that carefree again.
    Khloe was right.
    Damn it.
    Ava felt the weight of everyone’s gaze upon her. From Wyatt to Dern and even to Virginia, whose hands had quit rinsing the dishes, though they were plunged into the soapy water. Everyone waited.
    â€œI made a mistake—that’s all.” Ava held her hands palm up, as if in surrender. There was just no reason to lie, and she wouldn’t have anyway. “I thought I saw my son on the end of the dock and ran out to save him. It . . . it turns out I must’ve been mistaken. And it’s not ‘the middle of the night.’ ” A small point, but valid.
    â€œFeels like midnight,” Khloe grumbled.
    â€œThe boy’s been gone, what, nearly two years?” Biggs asked as Dr. McPherson slipped into the room to stand quietly near the pantry.
    â€œYes.” Ava’s voice was careful, her legs suddenly weak. She leaned against the refrigerator, hoping no one would notice. “But I’m fine now, Sheriff,” she lied, forcing a smile. “Thank you for your concern and your trouble coming all the way out here.”
    â€œNot a problem.” But his eyes held hers, and she realized they were both lying. It really irked her to be so submissive, but she knew she had to play her cards carefully or she could end up in a hospital under observation, her mental stability in question.
    Again.
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    Claiming a headache, which