Whispers by Lisa Jackson Read Free Book Online Page A

appeared about the same time her estranged family began making demands again?
    No way. Miranda Holland had been working for the law too long to believe in coincidence.

Three
    â€œIt’s now or never.” So why not never?
    Miranda turned off the Volvo’s engine and heard it tick as it cooled. Through the bug-spattered windshield, she saw the placid water of the lake and she bit her lip. In her mind’s eye she was eighteen, dripping wet, scared to death, and lying through her chattering teeth. “Oh, God,” she whispered, and dropped her head for a second, resting her forehead on the steering wheel. She hadn’t been back here since that summer.
    â€œGet a grip.” She couldn’t fall apart now. Not after all the years she’d spent making something of herself, proving to her father and the world that she was more than Dutch Holland’s daughter.
    Grabbing her purse and coat, she climbed out of the car, then walked along the path leading to the wide front porch that skirted the lodge. She rapped sharply on the front door, then didn’t wait for a response. She tried the knob and the latch gave way. Suddenly she was in the house where she’d grown up, and dozens of memories tripped through her mind. Innocent memories of a pampered childhood with her two sisters, absent father, and distracted mother. Darker images from her adolescent years when she alone knew that her parents’ marriage was disintegrating, that whatever love they’d shared had slipped through their fingers. And finally that dark, fateful night when all their lives had been altered forever.
    As she walked through the foyer, she was assailed by the scents of pine and solvent, wax and detergent. Hardwood floors gleamed to a soft patina as lamps, freshly dusted, cast pools of light on the newly waxed oak.
    â€œDad?” she called, running her fingers along the railing of the stairs that climbed three floors. There had once been a graceful wooden salmon arching upon the final post, but the fish, and all the other creatures that were carved into the railing, had been hacked away years before. Now only the scarred post remained.
    â€œBack here.” Just the sound of his voice caused her throat to constrict a little. For the first eighteen years of her life it had been her mission to please him, to prove to him that she was just as good as any son he might have sired. He had never bothered to hide the fact that he’d wanted boys—strong, strapping sons to someday take over the business—and Miranda had attempted to fill the void caused by the lack of male heirs. Of course, all her attempts had been a futile waste of time.
    Fist clenched around the strap of her purse, she marched through the wide front hallway toward the main room in the back of the lodge, a room with a ceiling that soared three stories and boasted a wall of glass that overlooked the smooth waters of the lake.
    Her father was seated in his favorite chair, a leather recliner placed strategically near the cold hearth of the fireplace. Dressed in a suit and tie, crisp white shirt, and shoes polished to a blinding gloss, he didn’t bother to rise, just cradled his drink as he leaned back and watched her enter. A newspaper lay open on the table next to his chair, and all the furniture, long draped, was uncovered. Even the grand piano on which she’d taken years of lessons was poised in the corner, as if ready for gifted hands to float over the keys and fill this old lodge with music again.
    â€œMiranda.” Dutch’s voice was rough and cracked a little. “You look just like—”
    â€œI know, I know.” She forced a smile. “More like Mom every day.”
    â€œShe was—still is, I imagine—a beautiful woman.”
    â€œShould I take that as a compliment?” she asked, and wondered what it was he really wanted after all these years, when her contact with him had been sporadic at