Awash (The Forgotten Coast Florida Suspense Series Book 6) by Dawn Lee McKenna Read Free Book Online

moments, a cold anger seeping into her chest, then stood back up. She looked around the stump for anything that might have been left behind by someone keeping a vigil of any length, but she saw nothing.
    The ground was mostly gravel and leaves, with a few rebellious patches of grass taking stands that were more spiritual than literal. However, there were a few partial footprints in the small amount of dirt at hand. Maggie was better with bodies than she was with prints, but they looked like athletic shoes to her.
    She squatted down and took a few pictures on her iPhone, then scrolled through her contacts for the crime scene tech number. Once she’d asked Jake to come back out and try to get the shoe prints, she pushed through the trees, too eager to get out of the woods to retrace her steps.
    Once she got back out on the shoulder of the road, she felt she could breathe more easily. It was then that she noticed she was still holding one of the leaves. She tossed it down and brushed off her hands.
    Wyatt had been right; it was easier for him to transfer than for her to quit. In a town of fewer than three thousand people, she lacked any marketable skill other than cop work. She also loved what she did. No, she needed to do what she did. But she wondered when she’d finally get tired enough of being so close to so much that was ugly.

    Half an hour later, Maggie drove down the half-mile dirt road that cut through her five acres a few miles north of town.
    The cypress stilt house her father’s father had built sat in the middle of old forest that butted up to the river. Here, where the loudest sounds were the cicadas and the crickets and her chickens, Maggie felt truly herself, and truly away from the world. Out there, she was a competent cop, a modern, educated woman. Here, she was just a cracker, as her people on both sides were crackers, and she was soothed by that.
    Coco tossed herself down the deck stairs with a percussion of tags and toenails, then threw herself down at Maggie’s feet as soon as she got out of the Jeep. Maggie knelt down and rubbed her belly.
    “Hey, baby,” she said quietly, as she looked up to the deck, where Stoopid stood at the top of the stairs, emitting his usual barrage of news and interrogatory remarks. When he began to perambulate down the stairs like an old man who’d just had a hip replacement, she decided to save him the trouble, and headed for the house.
    Stoopid stopped halfway down the stairs, and Maggie watched him as he pecked at his chest with a good deal of agitation, then finally flung a tiny feather over his back.
    “Quit it, Stoopid,” she said as she met him on the stairs, Coco trailing behind her. The rooster had been systematically plucking his chest for the last few days. She supposed she needed to run him to the vet and make sure he didn’t have mites or some other chicken affliction.
    Stoopid fell in behind Coco, ignored Maggie’s half-hearted “not you” when she opened the screen door, and tapped on into the house.
    Maggie dropped her purse on the dining room table. She could hear the sounds of a video game coming through Kyle’s open door down the hall, and found her seventeen year-old daughter Skylar in the kitchen.
    “Hey, baby,” she said.
    “Hey,” Sky answered from the counter, where she was making herself a sandwich. “I got your text. I thought you were off today.”
    “I was. I got called in,” Maggie answered.
    She pilfered a slice of salami from the counter and turned to find Coco smiling up at her. Maggie tore off a small piece and handed it to her dog. Stoopid was standing in front of the fridge, trying to talk it into opening itself. Maggie gently swept him aside with her foot, took out a bowl of fruit and vegetable scraps, and then headed for the front door with Stoopid right behind her.
    She dumped a handful of scraps into his cat bowl out on the deck, then let the screen door slap shut behind her as she went back inside. She put the bowl back