Chupacabra by Roland Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

despite the fact there was one right in her closet. It had been years since he had used any of them. Some he had never used.
    Click …
    A panel slid open with barely a sound. He reached through the opening, switched on the light, and stepped in. It didn’t look like anyone had been there in years. The dust was undisturbed. The Moleskine was not there.
    He took a few steps down a narrow aisle. He pushed another button and a second panel slid open, revealing the shower stall in Grace’s bathroom. He stepped through and closed the panel.
    Where did you hide it, Grace?
    He went through the bathroom cabinets again, then pulled the vanity drawers all the way out to see if she had hidden the journal behind them.
    The only place I haven’t looked is …
    He walked over to the toilet and pulled the lid off the water tank. Inside, double-wrapped in Ziploc bags, which she had no doubt taken from Lab 251, was the sixth Moleskine.

“Exactly when did your parents text you?” Marty asked. He and Luther were on their way down to the dock where the Coelacanth was moored, to retrieve their gear.
    “Good news about your parents,” Luther said.
    Marty stopped. “You didn’t answer my question.”
    “Huh?”
    “Spill it,” Marty said.
    “They didn’t exactly text me,” Luther admitted.
    “What did they do … exactly ?”
    Luther shrugged.
    “Where are they?”
    Another shrug.
    “They didn’t contact you at all.”
    “I’m sure they would have if they’d had the time.”
    “You lied to Wolfe.”
    “I prefer to think of it as distorting the truth.”
    “Why did you lie?”
    “I wish you’d quit using that word.”
    “Okay, why did you … uh … distort the truth?”
    “Because of Grace, you dunce. Someone has to get her out of the clutches of Noah Blackwood.”
    “We aren’t sure she’s in his clutches. You and everyone else said she went with him willingly.” When Grace was boarding the chopper, Marty was belowdecks trying to defuse a bomb.
    “She didn’t have a choice. She was under duress. If you’d seen it go down, that would have been crystal clear to you like it was to me. We need to get her away from Blackwood.”
    “What if she doesn’t want to leave now that she’s there?” Marty did not believe his cousin (and former fraternal twin sister) would choose Noah Blackwood over him and Wolfe, but she was up to something.
    “We at least need to talk to her and find out if she’s okay,” Luther stated.
    We need to talk to her and find out if she’s lost her mind! Marty thought.
    “As much as I’d like get back to Cryptos Island and look around,” Luther continued, “we can’t. If we leave the mainland, we’ll be off the grid. Stuck.”
    There were a lot worse places to be stuck than Cryptos, but Marty got the point.
    “How do you plan to contact her? Walk up to the mansion, knock on the door, and ask if Grace can come out and play?”
    “That’d work,” Luther said with his goofy grin. “Or we could just head over to the Ark, see where she’s hanging out, and talk to her.”
    “Yeah,” Marty said. “And maybe while we’re there we can find Butch McCall and Yvonne and have lunch with them. Maybe Noah will join us for a bite. I’m certain they’d be happy to see us.”
    “You’re right,” Luther said. “We’ll have to make sure they don’t spot us.”
    “With your hair?”
    “What’s wrong with my hair?”
    “Nothing,” Marty said. “Except that it looks like it’s on fire and it can be seen from the moon.”
    “Disguises!” Luther said. “Like Ted Bronson. I’ve been watching how he does it. I think I can do it better.”
    “You’re dreaming,” Marty said. “But there are a couple of things we could do. And we’re the last two people they’ll be looking for.”
    “So you’re in?”
    “Duh du jour ,” Marty answered.
     • • • 
    Marty and Luther had loaded two small backpacks with things they thought they might need. Sitting on the nightstand in