Cape Refuge Series 2 in 1: Cape Refge And Southern Storm by Terri Blackstock Read Free Book Online Page A

him.”
    Morgan just shook her head and got into the truck.
    Blair stepped up to the window, touched it with her fingertips. “I’ll go with you,” she said.
    But Morgan started the truck and pulled out into the street.
    Blair watched her drive away as a smothering sense of aloneness washed over her. Standing here, between the vehicles that held her parents’ white-cloaked bodies, she felt like a dot at the center of a massive mountain range, so small and insignificant that some little breeze could blow her off the earth like a flake of dust.
    The crowd that had formed outside Crickets couldn’t help her now. The police, still working the scene, had other things on their minds. The God to whom her parents had been so devoted seemed distant and far away, too busy with other matters to waste his time with her.
    She didn’t know what to do or where to go. Taking action seemed as abhorrent as standing idle. But her thoughts were too fragmented, and her organs didn’t seem to be working in tandem. Her body was a cage for this tornado that had ravaged her life.
    And any moment now, it would all go flying apart.

CHAPTER 7
    T he Greyhound bus held an odd combination of smells that made Sadie Caruso feel slightly sick. The woman behind her had been eating oranges since they had left Atlanta, and the man next to her who had slept the whole way snored in her direction, his bad breath sending up a cloud that was almost visible in the fading light. The man in front of her had a fierce case of body odor that spoke of disease and perhaps homelessness, but she had no room to talk—now, she was just as homeless.
    She cradled her left arm across her stomach and wished she had enough money to spare to buy a bottle of Tylenol to ease the pain. The bone was broken; she had no doubt. Her forearm was swollen, discolored and disfigured. But there was nothing she could do about it until she found safety. For that reason, she kept it under her shirt. When people saw it, they inevitably gasped in shock and insisted she get medical help. There would be time for that later, she told herself. When she had gone as far as the forty-two-dollar ticket would carry her, then she would see to herself.
    Her eyes drifted out the window to the highway, and she scanned the cars, making sure Jack hadn’t followed her. She didn’t see his car, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t back there somewhere, waiting to pounce the moment she stepped off the bus. It had happened before. She had once believed she was home free in St. Louis, but he had been standing there just inside the bus station, waiting to descend on her the moment she got off. That time he had broken three ribs and given her a concussion.
    She closed her eyes and leaned her head back on the dirty seat. With her right hand, she fished through her bag for a mirror. She couldn’t look like a runaway when she got off this bus. She needed to look older, full of purpose, like she knew where she was going, even if she didn’t. But the huge black bruise under her eye would attract attention. And the blonde, wispy hair that feathered around her face gave her the look of a fourteen-year-old. That would never do. She would be seventeen next month, but she had to look at least eighteen so she could get a job and support herself while she hid.
    With one hand she tried to scrape her hair up into a ponytail, then tried to flip it around so that it looked like some kind of well-planned updo—something a professional woman might wear. Or at least a sorority sister. But Sadie knew better than that. She had never even known a sorority girl. And she wasn’t the type to be college-bound, not with a ninth-grade education, a broken arm, and thirty-three dollars to her name.
    Abandoning her hair, she threw the mirror back into her backpack and fished around for the thin wallet at the bottom. She opened it, found the picture of little Caleb, only nine months old. In the picture she held, the light hadn’t gone out of