One Last Scream by Kevin O'Brien Read Free Book Online

back Amelia, and he didn’t want to. She’d been babbling on about some premonition she’d had that her parents and Ina were all dead.
    “Okay, watch your fingers and feet, pumpkin,” he said, helping Stephanie into the backseat. He shut the car door and made sure she was locked in. While Jody climbed into the front passenger side, George stashed the Old Navy and Pottery Barn bags in the trunk. He closed it, and then glanced at his wristwatch: 12:35.
    Ina definitely should have phoned by now.
    He checked his cell to see if he might have missed a call. There were no messages. The only call had been the one from Amelia.
     
     
     
    Pulling at her leash, the eleven-year-old collie led the way. Abby knew exactly where her owner was headed. She had that sixth sense some dogs had. When they came to a split in the forest’s crude path, Abby sniffed at the ground and quickly veered onto the trail that went along the lake’s edge—toward the Faradays’ house.
    “That’s a good girl,” Helene Sumner said, holding the leash tightly. A chilly autumn wind whipped across the lake, and she turned up the collar to her windbreaker. Helene was sixty-seven and thin, with close-cropped gray hair. She was an artist, working with silk screens. She had a studio in her house, about a half mile down the lake from the Faradays’ place.
    Helene had hardly gotten any sleep last night. When those shots had gone off at 2:30 this morning, Abby had started barking. She leapt up from her little comforter in the corner of the bedroom and onto Helene’s bed. The poor thing was trembling. So was Helene. She wasn’t accustomed to being woken up in the middle of the night like that.
    Hunting was prohibited in the area, and even if it were allowed, what in God’s name were they hunting at that hour? The tall trees surrounding the lake played with the acoustics, and sounds traveled across the water. Those shots rang out so clearly, they could have been fired in Helene’s backyard. But she knew where they’d come from.
    She’d just started to doze off again when another loud bang went off around five o’clock. Helene dragged herself out of bed and threw on her windbreaker. Grabbing a pair of field glasses, she walked with Abby to the lake’s edge, and then peered over at the Faradays’ house. No activity, no lights on, nothing.
    She retreated to the house, crawled back into bed and nodded off until 10:30—very unlike her.
    An hour ago, while having her breakfast—coffee and the last of her homemade biscuits—Helene had figured out who must have encroached on her sanctuary. Those three loud shots in the early morning hours must have been some kind of fireworks—bottle rockets or firecrackers.
    Now, walking with Abby along the lakeside path, Helene gazed at the Faraday place and thought about the daughter, Amelia. She used to be such a polite, considerate girl—and so beautiful. But there was an underlying sadness about her, too. And talk about sad, it was such a tragedy when the Faradays’ son drowned. It had been around that time, maybe even before, when Amelia and her lowlife boyfriend had started showing up at the weekend house without her parents. They were so obnoxious. Helene didn’t care about the skinny-dipping, but did they have to be so loud? She heard their screaming and laughing until all hours of the night, and sometimes it was punctuated by bottles smashing. They trashed the lake, too. Helene would find food wrappers, cigarette butts, and beer cans washed up on her shore after each one of their clandestine visits. Those kids were making a cesspool out of her lake.
    About a month ago, when the Faradays had come for a weekend, Helene stopped by with a Bundt cake and offered her belated condolences about Collin. Then, privately, she talked to Amelia about her secret trips there with her boyfriend. “It’s none of my business what you do with him, Amelia,” she told her, walking along the trail beside the water. “But I wish