Blind Instinct by Fiona Brand Read Free Book Online

trip, but at no point had he mentioned to her that he had retrieved any of Todd’s personal effects. If he had, logically, they should have been passed on toAunt Eleanor or Steve, but if that was the case, she was certain she would have heard about it. The Fischer family had been close, and the tragedy had pulled them even closer. A more likely scenario was that, with the media scandal still raging, her father had kept quiet and stored the items rather than upset Eleanor any further. Now, with both Eleanor and her father gone and Steve in the Witness Security Program, there was no one at hand to ask.
    If the items were in the attic, she needed to find them. The last thing any of them needed was for some antique dealer or the purchaser of the house to stumble across possessions that were not only private to the Fischer family, but that were potentially newsworthy.
    The staircase to the attic was dim and claustrophobic, and the attic itself was like an oven. By the time she threaded her way through old tea chests and boxes of books to one of the matching gable windows situated at either end of the room, perspiration beaded her upper lip and every pore had opened up. Working at the stiffened latch, she shoved the window open, leaned out and gulped in cool air.
    Minutes later, she had the second windowopen, and a breeze was circulating as she began the task of sorting through the jumble of boxes.
    Two hours later, sick of slapping at mosquitoes, she gave up on the idea of fresh air and closed both windows. With darkness blanking out the view and a single bulb her only illumination, she surveyed the junk.
    She had gone through two-thirds of what was, mostly, burnable rubbish: old books that had warped and moldered, clothes that should have been thrown away twenty years ago and an assortment of mostly broken kitchen appliances and furniture. She hadn’t stumbled across anything that was connected to Todd, but the more she searched, the more certain she became that if Todd’s personal effects were anywhere, they had to be up here.
    She sorted through another chest. Right at the bottom was a cardboard box labeled Fireworks.
    Vivid memories of bonfires and Fourth of July barbecues punctuated with the high-pitched whine of skyrockets took her away from the dim, dusty attic.
    One summer she and Steve had saved fireworks in order to make bombs. They had made a number of prototypes but had made the mistakeof blowing up a small tree. Both sets of Fischer parents had gone crazy. She and Steve had been forced to divulge their hiding place, then watch as the remaining fireworks were dunked in water, rendering them useless. The hiding place was here, in the wall of the attic.
    Pushing to her feet, she examined the area where the loose board had been, looking for prying marks that had been made by two kids more than twenty years ago. She found the marks. Holding her breath, she worked the board loose, breaking a nail in the process. Lowering the board along with its neighbor to the floor, she examined the shallow vertical cavity. Adrenaline pumped. She hadn’t expected to find anything, but there was something there.
    Reaching in, she grabbed a package and the canvas strap of a knapsack. A cold tingle went down her spine when the weight and the bulk of the knapsack registered.
    She carried both items into the center of the room, where the light from the single bulb was strongest. Unlatching the flap, she studied the bag’s contents. There was no doubt in her mind that these were the items her father had retrieved from Costa Rica; mementos too painful and toocontroversial at the time to keep in plain view or to hand on to either Eleanor or Steve.
    Maybe it was because she still felt raw and emotional after her father’s death and funeral, but Sara could remember Todd’s disappearance as clearly as if those events had happened last week.
    The fact that her uncle—a healthy, fit man in his prime—had died had