Read I Can See You for Free Online Page B

this?”
    “Last week. He said he planned to go to all the high
schools, to tell kids to stay in school. Promised Josie’s kids he’d be back to
play a game with their team, for the ones that stuck it out. The kids are still
talking about him,” he said and Eve smiled, touched.
    “It’s like Tom to do something like that without
bragging. He comes from good stock.”
    Sal lightly knocked his shoulder against hers. “You
come from the same place.”
    “Not exactly.” Tom’s mother, Caroline, was one of the
amazing women who’d raised her. Eve had no idea where her own mother was,
doubted she was still alive. “But I’ve been lucky enough to be taken in by good
folks everywhere I go.”
    She finished filling a second pitcher, lifting both
into the customer’s hands. She’d stopped gritting her teeth against the pain.
It was a constant throb now, but she thought she’d been hiding it pretty well.
Until Sal nudged her aside.
    “Ice your hand,” he said, then shot down her protest
with a warning look. “Do it.”
    “Yes, sir,” she said meekly and filled a bag with ice,
wincing as she placed it on her hand. “Why are you here?” she asked. “Rich was
supposed to be on with me tonight.”
    “He called in sick.” Sal’s hands made quick work of
the waiting orders. “Why are you here? Callie was on tonight.”
    “She had a date.” Who’d finally shown up with a dozen
roses and a story of a client who’d gotten himself arrested in an afternoon
hockey brawl.
    Sal frowned. “You worked every day last week.”
    “I need the money. The leak in my roof is worse,” she
said, but he shook his head.
    “No, you need to go out on your own dates. You’re too
pretty to hide in this bar.”
    Being called “pretty” still startled her. Being
accused of hiding, however, could not be borne. “I don’t hide,” she said more
sharply than she’d intended. “Not anymore.”
    She knew Sal studied her face even though she kept her
eyes averted. For years people had stared at her face when they thought she
didn’t see, but she’d always been aware of the horrified stares and the
whispers. At least people didn’t do that anymore and for that reason
alone her plastic surgeon should be a nominee for sainthood.
    “I’m sorry,” Sal said. “It’s just that you work so
hard here, then you go home and study, then go to school. And any moment you
have free you spend in that Fantasy Island computer game of yours, what with
its aviators and orgies. It’s not natural.”
    That “Fantasy Island” computer game was really called
Shadow-land, an online virtual playground. There was no Mr. Roarke in a crisp
white suit, but like the old TV show, it was a place where adults could pretend
to be anyone they wanted to be, interacting with millions of players all over
the world while pursuing virtual fantasies.
    Eve discovered Shadowland’s lure after the assault
that had taken her life, literally and figuratively. The virtual world had been
more than a game. It was a vital link to the outside world from which Eve,
scarred and ashamed, had hidden for too many years.
    Thankfully those dark years were gone. Like Tom
Hunter, she’d reinvented herself. Shadowland was no longer an escape, but a
tool for her graduate research.
    At least it had started out that way. But the tool of
her research had become a glitzy, gaping black hole, sucking her subjects into
its virtual world of fantasy faster than she could grab them. The research that
started out with such therapeutic potential had somehow become a trap, luring
and endangering the very people she’d sought to help.
    “It’s not ‘aviators,’ ” she said to Sal, irritated.
“It’s ‘avatars.’ The characters are avatars . And where are you getting
this orgy stuff?”
    Sal’s eyes twinkled and she knew he’d poked at her on
purpose. “I imagine that would be a lot of men’s fantasy. But not mine,” he
added quickly. “Josie wouldn’t like it.”
    “I’m