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Jules could hardly say the same of herself.
A siren wailed in the distance; then she spied an ambulance threading through the clogged lanes of freeway traffic, going in the opposite direction.
God, her head throbbed.
Even though it was a cloudy day, the glare got to her.
She found her pair of driving shades tucked in the visor and slipped them on.
“Come on, come on,” she muttered at the truck belching exhaust in front of her.
It took another twenty minutes and one more near collision before she reached her exit and eased along a winding road that hugged the shoreline of the lake.
She rounded a sharp curve and pulled through the open wrought-iron gates of a private residence. With a long, brick driveway, the building that appeared through the spruce and fir trees was more castle than house, a huge stone and brick edifice that rose three full stories on the shores of the lake.
She parked near the front door, next to her mother’s Lexus SUV. Then, without locking her car, she dashed through the spitting rain to the porch. Under the cover of the porch, she rang the bell and waited near the thick double doors.
Within a few seconds, a fussy-looking, wasp-thin woman answered. “Can I help you?” The woman was dressed in black slacks and a sleek sweater tied at her tiny waist. Ashblond hair, salon cut and teased, increased the size of her head and masked her age. Perfectly applied makeup accentuated her sharp features. Her smooth skin screamed facelift, and she glared at Jules as if she’d been interrupted from doing something very important.
Jules realized that in her decade-old jeans topped by her favorite UW sweatshirt, sunglasses, and faded baseball cap, she probably looked more like a bank robber than a worried family member. But, really, who cared? “I’m looking for Edie Stillman. She’s with her daughter, and they were going on a seaplane to—”
“I believe they’re at the dock,” the woman said with a smooth, practiced smile that didn’t hide her disapproval. Nor did she ask for any kind of ID or what Jules’s part in Shaylee’s departure was. She waved a disinterested hand toward a stone path leading around the house. “But I think you may be too late. The plane’s about to take off.”
Over the steady beat of rain, Jules heard the distinct sound of an engine sputtering to life. Hell! She was already running in the direction the woman had pointed as the engine caught and roared with the sound of acceleration.
CHAPTER 2
“Don’t let the dogs out!” the impossibly thin woman warned loudly as Jules, desperate to stave off the inevitable, dashed through the rain, over the uneven stones, and around the corner of the majestic house where rhododendrons shivered in the wind. She flipped up the hood of her sweatshirt, though cold rain was already dripping down the back of her neck.
Not that she cared.
She just wanted a minute with Shay.
A tall wrought-iron gate stopped her for a second, but a key was in the lock, so she pulled the gate open and heard it clang shut behind her as she flew down a series of steps.
The dogs—two black standard poodles—raced up to her. She barely gave them a second glance as she hurried to the dock and boathouse, where Edie stood under an umbrella that trembled in the wind. Beyond her, a seaplane skimmed along the top of the steely water, then made its ascent into the gray Seattle sky.
“Great!” Jules’s stomach dropped. She was too late. Damn it all to hell. “You put her on the plane?”
“I said I was going to. For the love of God, Julia, she’s just complying with a judge’s orders!” Edie Stillman, dressed in a blue silk jogging suit, turned to face her oldest daughter. Her expression said it all as she eyed Jules’s clothes with distaste. “Didn’t you have anything to wear?” she said, obviously embarrassed. “You look like some kind of thug.”
Rain battered the hood of Jules’s sweatshirt, dripping down the bill of her baseball cap. “Just the look I was going for.”
“I can’t even tell that you’re a woman, for God’s sake!”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Through her shaded lenses, Jules looked up to the sky and saw the seaplane vanish into the clouds. “Damn it, Mom, I said I’d take her in!”
“And Shay said … let’s see, what was that darling little quote?” Edie touched the edge of her lips and pretended to think as raindrops peppered the decking and pimpled the lake. “Oh, now I remember. She said, ‘I’d rather puke up dead dogs than live with Jules!’ Wasn’t that just the sweetest way of saying, ‘No thanks’?”
Jules bristled. “Okay. I know she wasn’t crazy about the idea, but, really, this place you’re sending her, it’s like a prison.”
“A pretty nice ‘prison.’ It looks more like a camp or a retreat. Have you seen the brochures?”
“Of course, I looked online, but they’ve got guards and fences and—”
“Then maybe she’ll learn the value of freedom.” Edie was unmoved.
“At what price?” Jules demanded as rain drizzled down her cheeks and stained the shoulders of her sweatshirt. The sound of the seaplane’s engine faded into nothing. She remembered the articles she’d pulled up on the Internet when she’d first learned of the plan to ship Shaylee off to Blue Rock Academy. “I’ve done some research, and they’ve had their share of trouble. The school’s gotten some bad press in the past year. A girl disappeared last fall, and there was something about a teacher being involved with a student and—”
