You Don't Want To Know by Lisa Jackson Read Free Book Online Page B

trying to help.
    Closing her eyes for a quick second, Ava tried to force herself out of bed, to face the day, but it seemed daunting.
    You can’t just lie here and feel sorry for yourself, can’t feed the paranoia that everyone’s against you. Get out of bed and do something. Anything!
    Throwing off the covers, she forced herself to roll off the mattress and hunt for her slippers. The cozy, rumpled bed beckoned, but she ignored the temptation of dropping back onto the mussed covers, laying her pounding head on the pillow and closing her eyes again to block out the world. What good would that do?
    Slippers on her feet, she paused to stretch, listening to her spine pop, feeling a yawn coming on.
    Coffee, that’s what you need. Two, maybe three cups of Italian roast or any blend with a crazy lot of caffeine.
    At the window facing Anchorville, she winced a little as a slim shaft of sunlight pierced through the opening between the nearly closed curtains and cut through her brain like a hot knife. God, her head hurt. But then it always did in the morning.
    She flung the heavy drapes aside and stared outside to a day already begun. The sun was up in the east, shafts of bright light hitting the water and sparkling so brightly she had to squint to make out the ferry, just churning away from the shoreline of the town of Monroe—a hamlet, really—on this side of the bay. Little more than a general store with a post office, a café that was open on the whim of its owner, a small inn, and a coffee kiosk surrounded by a smattering of houses, Monroe boasted seventy-eight full-time residents. The few children who lived there caught the ferry to school in Anchorville, and most of Monroe’s residents were employed on the mainland as well or worked at the old hotel, which was now a bed-and-breakfast, the only lodging on the island.
    Now the ferry was churning away from the island, gliding across the sun-spangled water effortlessly. A few recreational boats were chugging their way from the marina to the open sea.
    Instinctively she looked back at the dock, listing in the water, its weathered boards drying in the sun. Nothing looked out of place today; there wasn’t a hint of anything amiss, no physical reminders of her boy in his little red sweatshirt and jeans. No one standing at the misty dock’s edge.
    â€œYou’re losing it,” she whispered. Just like they think.
    She turned to try to catch a glimpse of the stable and the apartment where Austin Dern now resided, but of course she couldn’t see it from this angle.
    Get a move on.
    Turning, she spied her morning meds, three cherry-colored pills placed in a cut glass holder the size of an espresso cup sitting next to a glass of water.
    Someone, Wyatt probably, had brought them in this morning while she slept. She hadn’t heard the person arrive. A chill slid down her spine as she thought of what anyone could do while she slept so soundly. She didn’t want to swallow anything that might dull her mind, but Wyatt and McPherson insisted she needed the meds.
    â€œBull,” she muttered under her breath, carrying the glass into the bathroom, tossing the brightly colored pills into the toilet, and flushing them away.
    The water was still running in the old pipes when she returned to the room and replaced the medication glass on the nightstand.
    Throwing on a pair of jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt, she rummaged in her closet for a pair of beat-up tennis shoes and a green fleece pullover, the pullover something she’d worn for years that now was at least a size too big.
    Spying the sweater she’d worn the night before, she scrounged around in the right pocket and slipped out the key that had been left inside.
    â€œWhere do you fit?” she wondered aloud, staring at the jagged, worn notches in the blade of the key. There were no identifiable markings on it, nothing to indicate what it unlocked, but she slipped the slim bit of