In the Waning Light by Loreth Anne White Read Free Book Online

her.
    The image of the woman, her encounter with Mason Mack, filled Meg with unease as she arrived at a T-junction intersection with the coast highway. A sign pointed south to Whakami Cove. Another sign pointed north, back into town.
    Another bolt of memory sliced through her, the voice louder this time, oddly familiar . . .
    Wait. Stop! Don’t run, Meggie, don’t run!
    Hot panic flicked through her stomach. Then came a memory of Sherry’s voice . . .
    Cover for me, Meg. You won’t regret it . . . just tell Mom and Dad we went to see that new movie . . . do it for me . . . look, here’s some cash . . .
    Then wham . Yet another image. A flicker of black shapes against blinding white. It came with a sharp slice of pain up the back of her head. Then it was gone. Trees in her headlights bent suddenly in the wind, the gust tearing debris free that hurtled across the road and smacked into her windshield. She jumped, pulse racing, past slamming into present—a dark, wet, black horror trying to rise out of the abyss of her mind and crawl into her consciousness. With it came a raw instinct to flee. South. On the back of it rode a compulsion to stand ground, fight it. Make it show itself—this horror.
    Prove it. Prove you can go all the way and get the life you deserve.
    You haven’t been back to see your aunt since she went into that home . . .
    She gripped the wheel tight. Fine, you damn town. You don’t want to let go, then you got me. Gritting her teeth, she turned north, to Shelter Bay, clamping down on all her reasons for coming back. A mile in she took another turn, this time toward the ocean, negotiating the zigzagging road down to the bay.
    And there it was. Through the mist and whipping rain, the faint pulse of the lighthouse beam on the dark rocks of Shelter Head. A guide. A warning. A Janus message being sent out over the black sea.
    And as she rounded the point, snugged along the bay, she saw the marina. Above the buildings a neon sign smeared by rain flickered in dull pink: BULL ’ S MARINA AND CRABBY JACK’S CAFE . Another memory reared sharp and hungry, clawing open her chest. Blake kissing her on the dock. Her telling him that she was leaving. The desperation, the ferocity in his eyes, the emotion in his voice as he’d pleaded with her to stay, to just try. He’d enlisted the day after she left. Went straight into the army. Became a medic. She hadn’t seen nor heard from him since.
    His older brother, Geoff, had also left town, along with so many other of Sherry’s contemporaries. Her murder had come at a time of change in the lives of her fellow graduates, but to Meg it felt as if her sister’s brutal death had precipitated a more seismic shift in this town, and the lives within it.
    She wondered if either of the Sutton men ever came home to see their dad. Did Bull manage this marina on his own? He had to be about seventy now—the same age her dad would be, if he were alive.
    She rounded another curve dense with brush.
    A small VACANCY sign beckoned at the top of the long gravel driveway. Meg tapped her brakes, hesitating a moment, before quickly swinging her wheel and taking her rig bouncing down the steep, rutted track to the water.
    And she knew she’d just done it—taken her first solid step back into the past, into writing Sherry’s story. Into the murk of her own memory. Because now she would have to speak to Bull Sutton. He’d ask why she was here, and she’d ask him what he remembered about that day that she and Sherry went missing. She’d ask after his boys. And he’d give her their addresses.
    There was no turning back now . . .

CHAPTER 3
    Meg hoicked up her rain hood, exited her truck, and jogged through the lashing rain to the office. There was a small light on inside. She tried the door. Locked. Cupping her hand against cold glass, she peered in. It looked much the same as it had when she’d left Shelter Bay—a store counter, some crab nets, and other gear on the