All That Glitters. Mary Brady

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Cove, Maine, population fourteen-something-thousand, the wildly undulating sign read as she slowed the car to a crawl.

      The low-slung buildings of small-town urban sprawl blinked in and out of view as she crept into the small fishing village in the late afternoon storm-filtered light. Some of the buildings had boarded-up windows. A few had sandbags. There were no lights anywhere.

      A service station called O’Reilly’s had its large glass windows boarded up, but huge letters scrawled on the boards, OPEN and CALL. She supposed there was a phone number somewhere to be found, but she couldn’t see it for the rain.

      These people had been preparing for a direct hit by the hurricane called Harold. Even though the storm was passing them by, they had not known until two days ago they were to be spared the brunt of it.

      Addy peered out at the sealed-up buildings, wondering which ones had people inside. There had to be someone here who would refuse to leave and who could tell her where Zachary Hale would hide out. Nothing on the internet had narrowed it down to anything less than “somewhere near Bailey’s Cove, Maine.” In fact, Bailey’s Cove got no direct hits on the internet.

      With this storm raging, Hale would think he was safe, sheltered from prying eyes.

      Ha!

      When a puddle nearly swallowed the compact car, Addy pulled onto the higher ground straddling the lanes. She stretched her beleaguered fingers and retrieved her mobile phone that had flown off the seat during one of her dodges.

      She had a signal, but with the exception of her sister who needed money for school clothes, or makeup for herself if she found nothing she wanted to buy for the girls, she had no one to call.

      Sad.

      Silly.

      Stupid.

      Shut up, she thought. None of those things mattered. They were the past. Intrepid. Hard-hitting. Totally inquisitive, she said back to the nagging voice inside her head.

      After today, Adriana Bonacorda would be headed for the top again. And the frosting...her sister and all the others Hale had robbed would get a chance at recovering some of their losses.

      The road continued to descend into town. Buildings appeared and disappeared through the windswept downpour. On the ocean side of the road, she spotted a small wooden church. Soaked and dark, the siding seemed to shudder, but that might have just been the strobe effects of the rain.

      After a moment, Addy realized a woman stood in the arched doorway of the church. Her mop of hair swung wildly as she waved. A crazy woman, a comrade, a sister against the storm.

      Addy checked for traffic. Nothing but rain. She intended to make a U-turn to question the woman, but when she looked across the street again, the doorway was empty.

      Okay. Now she was imagining people. Maybe she was seeing herself in forty years. They both might be crazy and the woman had the same out-of-control mop, but the woman’s had been gray.

      Keep driving, she told herself, and she did. She had little alternative.

      Scuffling with the wind, she eventually reached what seemed, by the age of the buildings, to be the center of the old town. More boarded-up and shuttered windows greeted her, their darkness almost a grimace.

      At the corner, in front of a restaurant called Pirate’s Roost, a sign pointed to the harbor. A sliver of hope gleamed. Maybe that’s where the people were, trying to save their boats or piers or whatever seamen did in a storm.

      As she crept several blocks down toward the harbor on what had become a torrent instead of a street, Addy could see she was right. Luck again or savvy? She hoped the latter. Two crews in rain slickers wrestled with boats as one crew tried to secure a boat they had already rescued from the water, the other struggled to pull one out onto the dock. Each small craft dithered dangerously in the wind as they worked.

      All one of these people had to do was point her in the right direction and then she’d leave them to their task.

      She let the car roll slowly toward the pier.

      Once she found him in his hideaway, she’d get a reaction from the scum, swindler Zachary Hale, and if her luck still held, an interview. The whole interaction would likely be a series of bald-faced lies on his part, but it would give her starting points from which to tear this guy to the ground, kick him into the hole he’d dug with the pension funds and life savings of old ladies, blue-collar workers—and her widowed sister. Then Addy would cover him with the truth until he begged to return every dime he had left of his ill-gotten booty.

      The trickle down from this story was the gravy. People were going to recoup some of their hard earned money. Retirees, pensioners, kids trying to pay off college loans might actually get a break. Nuns. And Savanna, her sister, who had thought she was on her way to a secure future.

      This story would turn the tide for Addy and all the cheated.

      Darn, but she was good, and people were going to realize the lies about her for what they were.

      As if tired of her fanciful boasting, the bitsy car rolled to a stop on its own as it faced off against the wind.

      The closest four-man crew of yellow rain-suited workers had managed to raise the pleasure craft from the ferocious water and pull it onto a boat rack with ropes. But they struggled to rescue it from the wild wind and secure it on the stand.

      Addy left her fashionable fedora on the passenger seat, flipped up the hood of her lime-green Ilse Jacobsen rain jacket and snugged the zipper up under her chin. The car undulated in a scary shimmy as she leaped out and hurried toward a man holding a rope for all he was worth.

      Halfway there, the wind whipped off the hood of her jacket, slapped her long, hyper-curly blond hair against her cheek and stole away her breath. Her steps faltered and she stopped.

      Wet and chilled, she hauled her hood back on, but not before cold rain poured down the back of her neck and, as she leaned into the wind and managed to take another step—into her shoes.

      These people were crazier than she was to be out here. These were just boats, pleasure boats, and not someone’s livelihood. And since the remains of Hurricane Harold were passing right by this little-known corner of the world, their efforts were probably unnecessary.

      Forcing one foot and then the other, she struggled closer to the workers.

      Several boats had already been hauled out and sat tethered in place with taught ropes. Still out in the harbor, hardy lobster boats strained and rocked at anchor, and one particularly large yacht looked as if it were ready to break free and crash everything into flotsam on its way inland. Some poor rich guy was about to be short one boat.

      Zachary Hale, she hoped.

      As she got within a few feet of the boat, the closest man clinging to the rope hollered above the rushing wind, “Lady, get out of here.”

      “I need to ask you a question,” she shouted, and wasn’t sure her voice even got past the end of her nose until he wrapped the rope around one arm and pointed at the flapping overhead. Two identical red flags with black centers curled and snapped above them.

      Hurricane! Even a landlubber like her knew the meaning of those flags. СКАЧАТЬ