Read The Butterfly Forest (Mystery/Thriller) for Free Online Page B

you’re a sweet kid.  I’ve kinda missed a few generations in my life.  Or maybe nothing’s changed since I was locked up way before you were born.  A thing that hasn’t changed is bad in some people.  Be careful out here.”
    “That can’t touch us on this night.”  She smiled and looked at the moon.
    “That can always touch you, even when you don’t know it.  Just be aware.”
    “When was the last time you were hugged?”
    “Huh?”
    “Hugged.”
    “Hugged?”
    “That’s what I thought.”  She leaned in and put her arms around him.  “You can hug me, too.”
    Palmer slowly placed his arms on her back, finding a spot between the wings.
    “There,” she said, ending the embrace.  “You are loved, Night Raven.”  She turned to leave, walking toward the crowd in the meadow, the singing, the drums, the glow of the bonfire, almost floating like a winged moth to a flame where evil circled just outside the firelight.             
             

 
     
    ELEVEN
     
    I awoke before sunrise, slipped on shorts, T-shirt and running shoes.  Max kept under the blanket on her side of the bed.  She’d stayed up too late last night pacing the screened-in porch while gators rumbled and roared mating calls on the riverbank.  Fog stood motionless above the water as if layered clouds had descended from the heavens overnight.  The rising sun was a burnt orange planet trying to penetrate the mist.  The sunlight was a shattered radiance bent through steam and moving water, creating color wheels of dappled rainbows.  The river itself was drenched in morning light.
    My three-mile jog took me north, most of the running on a path near the river.  As the sun eased over the tree line, I thought about Elizabeth and Molly Monroe.  I’d left my card with them and instructions to call if they needed me.  I remembered my cell phone sitting back on the porch next to a framed picture of my wife, Sherri.  And I remembered the promise I’d made to Sherri to do something else with my life.  “I’m trying,” I said, the sound of my own voice out of character in the surrounding primal land of birdsong, water and light, a place where Florida existed like it had before the Spanish arrived 450 years ago.
    I pictured Frank Soto and the hate on his face as he kicked me.  What had Molly done or seen…or what had he thought she’d done or seen?  Maybe Elizabeth was right.  Maybe Soto was your basic serial rapist who got his erections by stalking women, using hate and violence as self-satisfying, sadistic foreplay.  Then why did he try to take them both, mother and daughter?  Could it have been because he assumed the daughter had told the mother something, and both needed to be silenced?
    I climbed the steps to my back porch, and there was Max waiting.  She was pacing to a different stimulus, this one bladder-induced.  I let her out, and she scampered to her favorite spot in the wide yard.  She watched a small Johnboat motor down the center of the river, a fisherman sipping coffee from a thermos, a V rippling the still water.   
     My cell phone didn’t indicate any missed calls or text messages.  I glanced down at Sherri’s beautiful eyes and said, “I’m trying.  No calls.  That’s a good thing.”
    Max looked up at me.  “Yep, I know, most of the time I talk to you.  I was just…”  Her head cocked, eyes curious.  “Oh, never mind, Max.  Let’s head to the marina.”  I had checked on the web and knew we had a few days of hot sun.  Now was the time to begin repairs to my boat.  It, like my home, creaked with old age.   
    I locked the river house, put Max in the front seat of the Jeep, headed for the grocery store and then went to Ponce Marina.  What I needed was a few days of sanding, painting, lots of sweating, saltwater, and some fresh seafood to keep my head in the direction I told myself it needed to be.  Then I thought about the heart-felt embrace Elizabeth Monroe