Whispers by Lisa Jackson Read Free Book Online

person who doesn’t give up without one helluva fight. I’m telling you, Miranda, watch that back of yours while you’re on vacation.”
    Vacation. If Louise only knew what Miranda was really doing—where she was going.
    Miranda wasn’t usually a woman prone to a case of nerves, but Louise’s worries, plus the mention of Ronnie Klug, had gotten to her. Ronnie Klug and his twelve-inch knife.
    The fact that she was leaving town for a meeting—no, make that command performance—with her father didn’t help ease the knots in her stomach as she made her way to her car. Dutch Holland was used to getting his way, from his ex-wife and children as well as his hundreds of employees. And now, for some unknown reason, he wanted to see his firstborn.
    Throwing her briefcase and coat into the trunk, she took one sweeping glance around the parking garage, then peered through the window and into the backseat of her Volvo. No one appeared to be lurking in the corners. No sinister figure in the shadows. Thank God.
    Miranda slid behind the wheel and tried to ignore a blistering headache that was beginning to pound at her temples.
    Within minutes she edged into traffic crawling steadfastly out of the city. The air-conditioning unit in the car was on the fritz, so she rolled down the window and studied the trunk of a Buick she was following. A gust of breathless summer air raced into the warm interior. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the rearview mirror. Not a pretty sight. Her lipstick had faded, her mascara rubbed off, and a network of tiny red lines was visible in her eyes. Her hair, pulled back into a tight knot at the base of her skull, was beginning to come loose. “Great,” she muttered, switching lanes as she yanked her hair free and tossed the thick rubber band onto the seat next to her. “Just great.”
    Who was the guy who’d been asking questions about her, and why was he nosing around now, when all hell seemed to be breaking loose? When her father, curse him, had decided to yank on his patriarchal strings again? When her life was falling apart?
    â€œPull yourself together,” she told herself; she couldn’t afford to fall apart. Not now. She’d worked too hard to get where she was, climbed up the ladder in the DA’s office one hard-fought rung at a time and suffered her share of emotional as well as physical hardships in the process. One mysterious guy loitering around wasn’t going to get to her. She wouldn’t, couldn’t allow it. She’d spent too many years feeling victimized, spent too much money on shrinks to finally put her past behind her, kept her secrets far too long to lose it all now.
    Nor was the summons from dear old Dad—a curt phone message left on her answering machine going to be her undoing. Running the fingers of one hand through her hair, massaging her scalp and letting the wind unwind the tangled strands, she drove steadily west, into the setting sun.
    Dutch Holland had ordered her to meet him at the family home by the lake of all places. She had thought that the old lodge had been boarded up for years, hoped that the slipcovers and sheets that had been draped over the furniture would never be removed, prayed that the secrets hidden away in that monstrosity of a cabin would be buried forever.
    â€œToo bad,” she muttered under her breath as she braked for a road construction crew that was packing up for the day. She maneuvered around the orange cones as one of the crewmen tossed a shovel into the back of a tar-spattered truck. A flagger—a woman in a fluorescent orange vest—paused to light a cigarette before stepping into the vehicle.
    Miranda squinted against the sun. A bothersome thought bored its way into her mind. Was it possible that the mystery man who had shown up asking questions in her office was somehow connected to the summons from her father? Or was it just a coincidence that he