The Off Season by Colleen Thompson Read Free Book Online Page A

clock—4:23 a.m.
    Wishing he could spare her this bad news, he laid his hand on her shoulder. “Christina.”
    With a murmur of complaint, she stirred. The silky texture of her hair sliding beneath his palm drove a fragment of memory like a splinter beneath his flesh. He heard the summer waves outside the screened window of his uncle’s rental cottage, felt the warmth of damp air heavy with the smells of salt and fish and seaweed. Saw her big eyes looking up at his, her light-brown hair fanned out on the pillow. “I think—I think I love you, Harris,” she whispered, “as much as it scares me.”
    He jerked his hand away and stepped back from the table, pulse throbbing at his temple. He had to get his head straight, put the past behind him. Or at least remember that whatever pain he’d caused her had come back on him a thousandfold.
    “Christina.” It came out gruffer this time. “I’m gonna need you to wake up now.”
    “What?” She straightened abruptly, brown eyes flaring in alarm.
    “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you,” Harris said. “You okay? You need some more coffee or—”
    She pushed her hair behind her ears, her eyes snapping into focus with impressive speed. “What was it the officer found in my garage?”
    “Your car.” He grimaced. “I’m sorry to tell you somebody’s vandalized it.”
    “ Doug’s car?” A deep flush rose from her neckline. “Why would anybody—I should go see.” Pushing back from the table, she stood, looking unsteady and uncertain.
    “You don’t—there’s no need to go out there.”
    She frowned at him. “What is it? What did she—what did this person do?”
    She, she had said. “Four slashed tires,” he told her. “And some carving on the driver’s-side door panel.”
    “Carving?”
    He nodded. “Obscenity, I’m afraid. The kind directed at a woman.”
    “I’ve heard the word bitch , Harris.”
    He winced. “Not that. The, um . . . the other one.”
    “ That one? Really?” Christina’s eyes sparked with indignation, her cheeks flushing. Shaking her head, she said, “I don’t get any of this. The woman on the monitor, the damage to the car. I can’t think of anybody who would—”
    “Can’t you?” he asked, deliberately giving the question a little hang time. “Are you sure about that?”
    “Of course I’m sure. I have no idea, unless somebody has a grudge against the kind of people who own places like this one. But this house isn’t even mine. I’m only staying here because my mom arranged it with her rich clients.”
    Rich was a relative term, he’d learned. He remembered how he’d once thought of her and her parents—her dad a respected local pharmacist and her mom the owner of her own business—as rich, miles above a Creekside kid like him. Even Christina, who was living far better than what he now realized was an average, middle-class level, didn’t seem to see herself as wealthy, apparently oblivious to the fact that others would. “I understand, but whoever did it—they might have the wrong idea. After all, a car like yours . . .”
    She crossed her arms and huffed out a breath. “That stupid car. It was Doug’s baby, never mine, and I meant to sell it after he—but my old Highlander’s transmission went out right after the funeral. Then things got so hectic, and I—”
    He held up a hand. “You don’t have to justify driving a nice car. Not to me or anybody.”
    She speared him with a look. “You wouldn’t think so, would you?”
    “There was something else, too,” he informed her, “out behind the house. Phone line looks like somebody could’ve jerked it loose.”
    She dropped back into her chair and crossed her arms. Her face going pale, she said, “Then s-someone really was here. Inside the house, with Lilly and me?”
    “There’s no evidence of a break-in,” he reminded her, knowing he’d be just as rattled by the thought of an intruder inside his own house when his son was sleeping over.