Saratoga Woods 02 The Edge of the Water by Elizabeth George Read Free Book Online Page B

see what we’re looking at.”
    Thorndyke was the man with the Coke-bottle glasses. He shouted back, “Now just hold on a minute,” but a chorus of protests met his words.
    That was when Jenn McDaniels caught sight of Becca. The girl’s eyes narrowed and her upper lip rose. Her expression said she smelled something bad.
    Right, Becca thought. It’s you.
    Jenn’s middle finger lifted in an unmistakable message. Becca turned from the sight of her. She turned also from the chaos going on inside the room. Seth had to be here, she figured, if his car was here. He met his GED tutor in the far back room, and he practiced with his trio there too.
    She edged along the spillover from the meeting, and she had good luck before she got ten feet. She saw Seth coming toward her from the back of the cottage, outfitted in his usual garb of flannel shirt, baggy black denims, thick-soled all-weather sandals, and fedora. He had on brightly colored homemade socks and he carried his guitar case. This told her that either practice was finished or the trio had given up in the face of the noise.
    Seth winced and fingered one of his ear gauges as shouts of “No way!” “This means something and it’s bad!” “Oh just sit the hell down!” came from the meeting room. Then he saw Becca and gave one of his Seth nods: a lifting of the chin and nothing else.
    He reached her, said, “Man, I am out of here. What about you?” and he shouldered his way to the door, saying, “Later,” to some people, and “Nah, it’s cool,” to someone who leaned toward him and spoke from one of the tables.
    Becca followed him outside where the wind had risen and the growing evening seemed colder than ever. She said, “What’s going on in there?”
    He said, “Meeting of the seal spotters.”
    “The who?”
    “Bunch of people from up and down the island who watch for a bizarro seal every year.” He indicated the people inside the Commons by flicking his thumb in their direction. “Lemme tell you, Beck, the way they’re acting, you’d think the freaking Apocalypse was going on. This seal shows up a few months early and it means everything from global warming to an announcement of the Second Coming of Jesus.” He shoved his fedora back on his head, then, and gave her a look. “What’re you doing here anyway?” And with a look around, “Shit, Beck, are you supposed to be floating around town like this?”
    “He’s still in San Diego,” she said. “I checked the Internet. They’re finally asking about his partner. ‘Where’s Connor and why hasn’t he picked up his mail since last September?’ Duh. If Jeff Corrie leaves town now, they’re after him.”
    “You
think
,” Seth said. “How’re you getting home, then?” And when she looked at him hopefully, he laughed and said, “Right. Come on.”
    “Yes! That’s why I love you,” she said. “You c’n read my mind.”
    “As if,” he told her.

SEVEN
    D erric Mathieson was just coming out of the Langley Clinic when Becca King and Seth Darrow passed its parking lot. He was hobbling in his walking cast to his mom’s old Forester, and as soon as he saw them, Derric wanted to punch someone’s lights.
    Two things stopped him from going after Darrow. First, his mom was right behind him locking up the clinic for the evening. Second and aside from his healing leg, what the hell good would it do? Yeah, he’d deck Darrow. And yeah, he’d feel a nanosecond of satisfaction at the sound of Darrow hitting the ground. But then he’d have his mom to contend with, and he’d also have gotten not one step closer to resolving
anything
with Becca.
    The
mom
part of the deal would be bad. Rhonda Mathieson was the greatest person to have as a mom about 80 percent of the time. She was in his corner, on his side, at his back, and whatever else. She’d been that way since she’d first locked eyes on him in a Kampala orphanage when he was six years old. It had taken her and his dad two years to get