Trace Their Shadows by Ann Cook Read Free Book Online

concerned brown eyes, she tried to speak and instead moaned.
    “Gotta guard against shock,” he said. “You’re white as a ghost. No sick joke intended.” He began tucking his jacket around her. “Better move you to the back seat, get your feet up a little.”
    “John Able,” she said faintly. “But how?”
    He sat back on his heels. “Now’s not the time to argue. You said you were coming back to ghost hunt. Everyone warned you, even the delightful Mr. Blackthorne. But I worried, so I phoned your mother after dinner. She told me you were working on some mysterious story and wouldn’t be home until late. That cinched it. I cruised up behind the boat house about the time you hit the lake.”
    “I thought…
    “I know. You thought I was the overfed hunk you were with at the pub. You said his name. Sorry.” She felt arms under her knees and around her back, knew her tattered dress clung to her body, felt rivulets of water drain onto the deck. His own jeans and tee shirt were soaked. He must have jumped in himself.
    He carried her across the deck and laid her on the cold vinyl. Then he forced a seat cushion under her knees and peered once again at her face. “Hard to tell about shock in this light. Your skin’s a little bluish, but you didn’t inhale much water. You were just scared to death.”
    Below the white running light, Brandy could see ripples glisten along the shore where the Dobermans had retreated. Then her eyes widened, and she drew in her breath. Under a cypress tree several yards away a long, corrugated shape slid from the bank. About twelve feet of thick, smoke–green hide stretched forward on the surface and drifted through the bar of light, nostrils and eye ridges elevated, pointed tail raking the water. Brandy’s teeth chattered, her whole body shook. The ‘gator had been there, close by, after all.
    Once more John knelt beside her, leaned against her, tried to quiet her tremor while the huge back gradually submerged and was gone. “With all that ruckus going on,” he murmured, “the old boy probably thinks the neighborhood’s gone to pot.”
    A smile trembled on her lips. She buried her face in his chest and knew the tingle she felt was not from trauma.
    After wrapping his jacket more tightly around her, he held his fingers on her pulse. “Still rapid and not strong enough. We got to get you warm and dry. Get some hot tea down you.” He lifted a water hyacinth from her soggy hair. “Tonight you’re not exactly Cleopatra on her barge, but hang in there. This is the best I can do until I get you to the trailer.”
    His trailer, she thought. She did not protest. Even shuddering with cold, she admired the grace with which he stepped to the bow, cut off the silent trolling motor, and switched on the gasoline engine. How could she have ever called him unimaginative? Mack would not see her as a bedraggled Cleopatra. He never read anything but the sports pages.
    Yet as John guided the boat away from shore, he gave no sign that he felt the same electricity. In the distance a thin whistle shrilled and then faded. At the sound, the Dobermans whirled and tore back around the house out of sight.
    Weakly Brandy raised herself on one elbow. “Someone opened the gate. There were only two keys——Blackthorne’s and your Aunt Sylvania’s.”
    “Probably thought you were a burglar. The dogs are lucky the ‘‘gator didn’t go for them.” He looked back at her and shook his head. “But Aunt Sylvania’s right about one thing. The lake can be dangerous. Especially if you run across a cottonmouth moccasin.”
    Brandy watched the high, gray front of the house recede, its curved window on the second floor lit like a giant eye. But the figure emerging from the rear was not ghostly. Brandy recognized Sylvania’s tall silhouette. She walked across the grass, and stood beside the boat house, looking out over the saw palmettos.
    John nodded in her direction. “The keeper of her brother’s flame.