Magic Rising by Jennifer Cloud Read Free Book Online Page A

involving Tech, but she trusted her employees to an extent. They were her backup.
    She walked out of the gym and found the temperature already growing with an uncomfortable stickiness. Deirdre tossed her bag into the backseat of her Viper and slid into the driver’s seat.
    As she started the engine, her cell phone rang. She glanced down and saw Noah Smythe’s number. Talking with him now wouldn’t help her. She never understood his need to constantly check on her. It had started before their first date, so the extra attention couldn’t be blamed on romance. Some people were just clingy.
    Letting the call go to voice mail, she pulled onto the main road. She hadn’t ever driven to Stone House and it took her a minute to figure out which interstate would take her there. She connected the routes in her mind and made an abrupt U-turn in the middle of the street.
    Ten years ago she’d sworn never to return to that hellish place. All of her possessions had been left behind except for one change of clothes and a short sword. Everything else burned with the building. She’d hung around, watching from the woods as the forestry service came to fight the fire. There was no saving the structure. The roof collapsed and much of the front wall fell in at the same time. It had been a strange sound. The fire had been loud, but the stone crumbling down was reduced to a rush, like an ocean wave breaking on shore. She was supposed to die in the blaze.
    At the time of the fire, she had wanted to. The only place she called home was burning and her mother was dead. Survival instincts took over as soon as the first floor caught light. Grabbing her single bag, and crawling up the stairs, she escaped the flames. With the window open, fresh air remained tinged with the stench of fire below. She didn’t want to burn. Burning hurt too much. Instead, Deirdre jumped from the ledge of the second story, landing in the wood-chip pile, where they’d stuffed the punching bags and practice dummies once a month. The wood caught fire when she jumped into it. Flames danced around her head on all sides, burning her shoulder and singeing her hair. She got up before the worst of it fell and fled to the woods while the building that tainted her became engulfed. Oh sure, a building didn’t sound like a living entity but this one was alive, either through the people who committed those atrocities or a pure evil force all its own.
    Her cell phone interrupted the hard memories. Glassy eyed, she reached for the belt clip and pulled it out. Tech’s number appeared on the display. Damn, he was getting fast. She might have to give him that raise after all.
    “Talk to me.”
    “You won’t believe what I’ve found.” He sounded happy, so he’d found something good. She suspected he got a boner every time he found a juicy tidbit to pass on.
    “Don’t leave me hanging here.” She put on her turn signal and pulled to the curb to take the call.
    “The local news has Tamara Haas getting on a plane with her daughter.”
    “What? I never met a daughter.”
    A laugh echoed in her ears. “You’re telling me. Since the stalker story broke, the press has been all over her. There are pictures of Tamara Haas getting onto a private jet with a kid. The girl can’t be more than twelve.” She heard him hitting buttons. “Wait a minute. I took a digital when the story aired. I’ll send it to your phone.”
    “You mean when you were supposed to be hacking, you were watching television.”
    His jovial mood ended. “I ran into some trouble and took a break. Forgive me.” He huffed. “I couldn’t find anything on a Lora Shope. Nothing. Not really unusual. Kids are hard to track. They don’t have driver’s licenses or utility bills.”
    She hated it when he defended his actions. It would be better to hear him say that he’d taken a break than go into detail about the difficulties in tracking a child. There were ways. A simple check on the father would give a location