Read Whispers for Free Online Page B

She’d stepped inside the front door expecting to find Eddie Rodriguez waiting, but what met her eyes was something entirely different.
    For a moment an utter sense of displacement stopped her. Nothing was the same. Not the furniture, the pictures, the curtains. Not the strangers crowded inside. She tried to sort through her confusion as she stared at the clustered group of people. A man who looked as if he’d neglected to remove his Dracula costume after Halloween, an older, light-skinned woman wearing an African turban, and a priest of all things. Rounding out the group was a young man with the classic good looks of a model or an actor. And, nearby, most bizarre of all, Reilly Alexander.
    “ What...” She couldn’t even think of what she wanted to ask. It was like a nightmare that kept morphing from one psychotic scenario to another.
    She shook her head and fixed her attention on Eddie. He, at least, was supposed to be here. “Where is she? Where is my daughter?” she asked. Her voice cracked with the necessity of asking.
    “ She’s fine, Gracie,” Eddie said, taking her shoulders in his reassuring hands. “Dr. Graebel checked her out. She has a bump on her head and she’s shook up, but no permanent damage. He’s got her over at the clinic and is going to bring her here as soon as he gets the boy settled in.”
    The boy? Brendan? Brendan brought her here. Why?
    “ How is he?”
    “ Hard to say. Doc’s got some tests going—he isn’t conscious yet, but so far Doc can’t figure out why. I’m sure he’ll tell you when he gets here with Analise.”
    “ I’ll go get her,” Gracie insisted. “I don’t want to wait to see her.”
    “ Gracie, she’ll be here in a few minutes.”
    From the porch she heard her dogs barking like maniacs. She’d tied them there before coming in. Gracie pivoted and stepped outside.
    “ Tinkerbelle, Juliet, heel.”
    Both dogs obeyed immediately, sitting with ears pricked and shamed faces. Romeo trotted to her side and sat on his hind legs.
    “ Stay,” Gracie commanded them and they contritely did as they were told. The three tracked her with their eyes as she left the porch, but none of the dogs moved so much as a hair.
    When she came back inside, it seemed like the whole room had responded to the authority of her voice. The priest and the good-looking young guy both stood attentively. The old woman was smiling at her, though Gracie didn’t know why. Dracula waited close at her shoulder, protective as any watchdog she’d ever seen. Reilly was beside Eddie, watching her like she was a ghost.
    Gracie wanted to ask about her grandmother, but not with an audience, especially one as strange as this group. In fact, why were they here? Why were they all gathered by the door at this late hour?
    “ Eddie,” she said, lowering her voice and turning her back to them. “Who are all these people? What are they doing in the Diablo?” In the middle of the night, dressed for a masquerade?
    Eddie looked blankly back. “Your guess is as good as mine. Reilly brought them.”
    Reilly’d had his mouth open since she’d walked through the door. Eddie’s comment shut it.
    Gracie hadn’t seen Reilly since she’d left Diablo Springs. He was taller now, more broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped—a bigger man than she’d remembered him being—but she could have picked him out of a crowd. Sure, he was a little older, a little harder. A lot less boy, a lot more man. He wore a sleeveless T-shirt that showed a golden tan and the thick corded muscles of his arms and shoulders, faded Levi’s, and flip-flops. A Chinese symbol was tattooed on his right forearm, and a series of them made a chain around his left bicep. His hair was just shy of shaved and a five o’clock shadow darkened his jaw.
    The sight of him slammed into her already overloaded emotions. He was like the song that would forever remind you of a tragedy. Where were you when the earth stopped turning? Standing face-to-face with