The Sign of Seven Trilogy by Nora Roberts Read Free Book Online Page A

“We’ve got to end it. This time we’ve got to end it. Maybe talking to this writer will help. Laying it out to someone objective, someone not involved.”
    â€œAsking for trouble.”
    â€œMaybe it is, but trouble’s coming anyway. Five months to go. We’re supposed to meet her at the house.” Cal glanced at his watch. “Forty minutes.”
    â€œWe?” Fox looked blank for a moment. “That’s today? See, see, I didn’t tell Mrs. H, so it didn’t get written down somewhere. I’ve got a deposition in an hour.”
    â€œWhy don’t you use your damn BlackBerry?”
    â€œBecause it doesn’t follow my simple Earth logic. Reschedule the writer. I’m clear after four.”
    â€œIt’s okay, I can handle it. If she wants more, I’ll see about setting up a dinner, so keep tonight open.”
    â€œBe careful what you say.”
    â€œYeah, yeah, I’m going to. But I’ve been thinking. We’ve been careful about that for a long time. Maybe it’s time to be a little reckless.”
    â€œYou sound like Gage.”
    â€œFox…I’ve already started having the dreams again.”
    Fox blew out a breath. “I was hoping that was just me.”
    â€œWhen we were seventeen they started about a week before our birthday, then when we were twenty-four, over a month. Now, five months out. Every time it gets stronger. I’m afraid if we don’t find the way, this time could be the last for us, and the town.”
    â€œHave you talked to Gage?”
    â€œI just e-mailed him. I didn’t tell him about the dreams. You do it. Find out if he’s having them, too, wherever the hell he is. Get him home, Fox. I think we need him back. I don’t think we can wait until summer this time. I gotta go.”
    â€œWatch your step with the writer,” Fox called out as Cal started for the door. “Get more than you give.”
    â€œI can handle it,” Cal repeated.
    Â 
    Q UINN BLACK EASED HER MINI COOPER OFF THE exit ramp and hit the usual barrage at the interchange. Pancake House, Wendy’s, McDonald’s, KFC.
    With great affection, she thought of a Quarter Pounder, with a side of really salty fries, and—natch—a Diet Coke to ease the guilt. But since that would be breaking her vow to eat fast food no more than once a month, she wasn’t going to indulge.
    â€œThere now, don’t you feel righteous?” she asked herself with only one wistful glance in the rearview at the lovely Golden Arches.
    Her love of the quick and the greasy had sent her on an odyssey of fad diets, unsatisfying supplements, and miracle workout tapes through her late teens and early twenties. Until she’d finally slapped herself silly, tossed out all her diet books, her diet articles, her I LOST TWENTY POUNDS IN TWO WEEKS—AND YOU CAN, TOO ! ads, and put herself on the path to sensible eating and exercising.
    Lifestyle change, she reminded herself. She’d made a lifestyle change.
    But boy, she missed those Quarter Pounders more than she missed her ex-fiancé.
    Then again, who wouldn’t?
    She glanced at the GPS hooked to her dashboard, then over at the directions she’d printed out from Caleb Hawkins’s e-mail. So far, they were in tandem.
    She reached down for the apple serving as her midmorning snack. Apples were filling, Quinn thought as she bit in. They were good for you, and they were tasty.
    And they were no Quarter Pounder.
    In order to keep her mind off the devil, she considered what she hoped to accomplish on this first face-to-face interview with one of the main players in the odd little town of Hawkins Hollow.
    No, not fair to call it odd, she reminded herself. Objectivity first. Maybe her research leaned her toward the odd label, but there would be no making up her mind until she’d seen for herself, done her interviews, taken her notes, scoped out the local library. And,