Hale's Point by Patricia Ryan Read Free Book Online Page A

chest, I’ve lost track. The
rest is scattered over the side of a mountain halfway between Anchorage and
Fairbanks.” Standing at the door, he said, “Sure you won’t join me downstairs?”
She shook her head. He turned to leave. “Don’t forget your stopwatch.”

 
 
 
    Chapter 3

 
    Tucker sat on the low stone wall overlooking the beach,
having a cigarette and watching Harley returning from her run. The late-afternoon
sun, low in the sky, cast the boulders on the rocky beach into sharp relief.
The sea air mingled with the lavender and thyme growing along the stone wall to
create a familiar perfume, the scent of his mother, who had planted this
border. It was Harley’s scent, too, he realized, breathing it in. At least, the
lavender part. Her shampoo, or maybe her soap.
    As she approached, he noted that she ran barefoot and kept to
the wet, pebbly sand at the water’s edge. He watched the muscles in her legs
flex and contract; grace came from strength, and she was obviously
well-conditioned. Fanatically so, it seemed.
    She was driven and she was humorless, but there was something
about her. As she crossed the property next door—the Tilton place, or used to
be—she waved to someone hidden from his view by a stand of gnarled pines. She
passed by Tucker without looking up and seeing him, and then, instead of
stopping, she disappointed him by continuing east. Her pony tail bobbed with
each step; from time to time she squirted water into her mouth from the plastic
bottle in her hand. As she ran out onto the jetty, her stride never altering,
he lit a new cigarette off the old, stubbed the butt out on the stone wall, and
slipped it into the pocket of his T-shirt.
    From behind the stand of pines, a man emerged, obviously the
person Harley had waved to. Tucker stood to see him better, squinting through
his sunglasses. He was young, about twenty, tanned, with sun-streaked hair. His
feet were bare and he wore a white polo shirt and khaki shorts, in the deep
pockets of which tennis balls bulged. The Tiltons used to have two clay courts in the backyard; looked like they still did. The
young man stood next to a boulder at the water’s edge, also watching Harley.
    She ran to the tip of the jetty, turned, and took the return
trip in an impressive, all-out sprint. When she got to its base, where it
joined the beach proper, she slowed her pace to a brisk walk, checked her
stopwatch, and pressed the side of her throat to take her carotid pulse. The
young man pulled three tennis balls from his pockets and began to juggle them.
Harley smiled, then noticed Tucker for the first time, standing at the top of
the makeshift boulder stairway. She waved to him and he nodded. The young man
looked up at him and frowned, dropping a ball. Tucker knew he didn’t look
reputable enough—with his black aviators, cigarette, and three-day growth of
beard—to be mowing Raleigh Hale’s lawn.
    Harley propped first one foot and then the other on the
boulder, leaning over to stretch her hamstrings. While she warmed down, she and
the boy talked, both of them glancing from time to time in Tucker’s direction.
Her stretching took longer than Tucker thought strictly necessary, and when she
climbed up to the yard and rejoined him, he merely nodded again in response to
her smile.
    “Who’s the guy?” he asked.
    “Déjà vu,” Harley said. “Those were Jamie’s first words just
now.” When she repeated the phrase, it was with a stiff-jawed Hale’s Point
accent: ‘“Who’s the guy?’”
    Tucker couldn’t help smiling. “So you do have a sense of
humor.”
    “Of course I do!” She sat in the grass, extended her legs
straight out in front of her, grabbed her sandy feet with both hands, and
pulled. “I just can’t take a joke. There’s difference.”
    He chuckled and shook out another cigarette. She closed her
eyes, and he took the opportunity to appraise her shamelessly. Her skin had a
ruddy glow and was glazed with a sheen of