Rural Minnesota     Eight years ago   I creep across the parking lot of the aging gas station, eyes adjusting quickly to the darkness. We go out only when it’s dark because it’s easier to hide. I don’t mind anymore. I’d rather hide now, rather tuck away the parts of myself I have left. I’m almost to the door, beckoned by the glow of fluorescent light, the promise of air- conditioning. But a low whistle makes me turn back—he’s watching, always watching. I shiver as I push the door open, stepping into soft music and crisp air, like entering another world. “Evening,” the attendant calls from behind the red counter.   The greeting jolts me, and I turn quickly down an aisle, remembering my warning: Don’t take too long. I rub my tender wrist—proof of my last mistake—then absently pull down the sleeve of my ratty flannel. I cross to the back corner, then walk the perimeter, staring intently into each cooler as if deciding which soft drink to purchase. In my peripheral vision, though, I’m scanning, checking, as I’ve been taught. Suddenly the bathroom door creaks open behind me. A giggling toddler bounds out, followed by a frazzled-looking…

Hawaiian Freediving Association Semifinals The Elysium Grand Resort Wailea, Maui Lisa Kealoha searched the beach crowd crammed against a rope line thirty feet from the water—a collective living, pulsating organism, growing by the minute as more pushed in to see the local favorite Kelly Alana. Finding her target among all that movement was no easy task. Show your face for me, Koa. I just want to talk. No arrests today, unless you do something dumb. She needed an in with the local criminal element. And she’d grown up with the perfect candidate—Koa Alana, the cousin that Kelly Alana saw more as a brother. She always had, ever since they were all kids, even though Koa had dragged both Kelly and Lisa into a lot of trouble over the years. Lisa stayed close to the rope on her approach, minimizing Koa’s view angle, but he’d always had sharp eyes. He saw her coming. “Hey, Sistah. I heard you back. Didn’ believe it ’til now.” “Don’t run, Koa.” “You see me runnin’? I don’t care if you some big, scary LA cop now. I don’t care where you been.” Funny, because he did look scared. Lisa had overtaken him in height after…

Prologue   2018 APRIL 12   She sent me a Friend request. Usually I get stupidly excited by one of those—someone out there wants to get in touch. At my age, anything unexpected that doesn’t involve disease or death is a relief. So unless it’s from some random weird person, a Friend request is a plus. But when I saw her name I winced. Why had she contacted me after all this time? Almost fifty years had passed since I last saw her. I know that school ties, especially at a boarding school, are strong ones. We spent four years together in classrooms, on sports fields, in dormitories. Four years seeing each other every day and every night. Four teenage years cooped up like chickens in a pen. We all got to know each other much too well. Yet our class has been a ghost class: it’s been as if we never existed. Not for us the “are you married/do you have children/what job do you have/you’re looking great” staples of school reunion banter. The Stonybridge School for Girls graduating class of 1970 never had a class reunion. We effectively disappeared ourselves. We all wanted to forget. So why look…

Excerpt from AMONG THE INNOCENT by Mary Alford, taken from Chapter Two   Something caught her attention above. Movement near the cracked window of her old room. Tattered gingham curtains waved. Just the wind? Leah shielded her eyes against the sun’s glare. A figure. Barely visible past the curtains. Someone was in the house. Without thinking of her own safety, Leah raced to the entrance. Ramming her shoulder against the warped door, she forced it open and charged inside. Ten years of dust covered everything, yet time had been encapsulated into this compact space. The sight of her mamm’s knitting next to her favorite rocker sucked the breath from Leah’s body. Pushing aside those heartbreaking memories, Leah drew her weapon and eased toward the stairs while recollections of the many times she and Ruth had slid down the banister crowded in. She stuffed them down deep as she reached the landing. Braced for the confrontation to come. The first door on the right belonged to her parents. As quietly as possible, she opened it and peeked inside, fighting the haunts waiting there. The room was vacant of anything resembling human life. Next, she checked her brother’s room. Nothing. One more…

“Yer gonna have ta calm down, Lillian. Yer scarin’ them kids.” Miss Tilly was beating eggs for the meringue topping on her strawberry pie for supper with Father. She paused only an instant to speak the words quietly, her eyes fixed on Lillian. “Am I? Scaring them?” “Yeah, I think ya are.” “Oh dear.” There’d been so much to worry about. Lillian had momentarily forgotten to try to appear confident for the sake of the children. Her heart had fluttered uncomfortably for much of Saturday afternoon and by now her stomach was churning. Her long-awaited reunion with Father was fast approaching. “I’ll try.” “With as many folks as are lookin’ north just now, I wouldn’t doubt but them kids’ll be home ’fore ya know it.” Lillian groaned. “I do hope you’re right.” In spite of the strain of it all, supper was being prepared. The table had been set. There was no way to know if Grace and Ben would arrive home before Father and Delyth appeared, but there was no way to postpone the meal. Lillian was suddenly aware that the children should have been her most important focus at the moment. “Would you mind, Miss Tilly, if I…

All of his attention was once again absorbed by Juliet Templeton. The sketch she’d done of him… he wanted to see it. No. It was more than that, worse than that. He needed to see it. Burned to see it. Yet what good would come of it? He’d see her sketch, and then what? She’d demand to see his sketch of her, and it would only delay the inevitable end of this strange attraction between them. With every word they exchanged, every furtive glance between them, he slipped a little further under the surface. Soon enough, he’d be drowning in her again. But even as these dark thoughts wound through his head, he was winding his way across the drawing room, bypassing his other guests with hardly a glance, his gaze full of her. Always her. “Miss Templeton. May I have a word?” She gave him such a wary look he caught her wrist—again, because he couldn’t seem to stop touching her—to forestall a refusal, but before she could say a word, Lady Fosberry gave Juliet a tranquil smile and a little pat on the shoulder. “Go on, dearest. I fancy a rest before it’s time to dress for supper.”…

It was possible that his timidity and reserve weren’t just for show. The first four takes came out flawlessly; Chaudhuri re­quested they try again from a couple of different angles, but The Throne was off to a rocking start. A subdued thrill was running through the crew, like a shared fever. Crew knew immediately when they held on to a winner. Crew recognized talent. They recognized it now. Andrée, waiting on the sidelines for her cue, had her mouth set in a curious frown. Chaud­huri’s face was grave. Across the set, actors and DAs and cam­era crew were all looking at Chris. Nicholas was looking too: the trouble was looking away. Chris was enthralling. His Angelo was by turns infuriating and lovely, selfish to the point of loss and charming to the point of disbelief—his hands nervous, his body active and mobile, his face changing emotion in a flash. Nicholas kept breaking off, catching onto a different thread of action, meeting Chris’s motion with his own. Like a dance. He wasn’t used to being led. But this was not quite like being led. It was moving in one direction, and finding the movement echoed in another body. It was like…

Francesca watched in horror as her husband ran from the lake, from her, and from Addie, disappearing into the advancing shadows. For a moment, she comforted herself with the belief that he was going for help, but the moment faded as quickly as it had come. Hope dissolved into panic and despair. In her heart, she understood the truth. He had answered her tearful pleas with nothing but a hurtful, intractable silence. A silence that flew over the lake toward her, landing like a purposeful blow, striking her to her core. A silence that inflicted a mortal wound from which she knew she would never recover. He hadn’t once looked back at her or the lake. He just ran. Away from her and Addie, leaving them both to die. She was overcome with sorrow and a crushing fear. She wanted to find Addie, to help her and to save her, but she felt her physical self weakening. The more exhausted she grew and the more fearful, the more she thrashed about in the water. — “No, no,” Dominic cautions as he tries to stop her. “Don’t struggle so much. You need to just relax. Relax.” “It’s too deep,” she frets as Dominic puts his arms around her and guides his six-year-old daughter to the middle…

Excerpt from Chapter 1     Beth He looks at me with what appears to be great effort. Like he was about to nod off into a heavy, much-needed nap when I interrupted. He doesn’t look too bothered. Not like he might were I a car smashing through his fence. See that, Mom? I take my hand off the Nikon’s focus ring and give him a friendly wave. Hopefully he doesn’t find it creepy that I’m peering over his fence with a camera in hand. Why am I still holding the camera, anyway? “Hi?” he says as if he isn’t sure I’m even real. “I thought I was all alone out here.” I gesture vaguely at the world around us. Told you I’m a liar. “Seems like everybody else on the street already jumped ship for the season. Winter is coming.” “Call it a slack tide,” he says with a somber nod. “We’re between holidays, the kids are back in school, the weather’s just starting to turn, but the storm watchers won’t start arriving for another month. There aren’t many year-rounders here.” He pokes at the logs with an old hot dog skewer that’s coated in rust. The sight of…

The moment Brody shuffled up the steps, his thoughts turned to Savannah. His pulse surged, as it had every time he pictured her. All the while he’d groomed the horses and calmed the new mustang, he relived the way she’d glided her fingers over his arm when she’d taken her bag from him. He doubted she meant anything by the touch. Probably hadn’t known she’d done it. But just thinking about the caress made the hair on his arm tingle again. He’d never seen a woman as pretty. Or as kind. She’d fussed over the mustang off and on during the ride back to the ranch and had taken better care of her own horse than she had of herself. Weariness had marked her features long before she’d started yawning. He didn’t know her history, and it wasn’t his place to probe. But if he had to guess, he’d say she was running from someone or something. No other reason a respectable woman like her would be wandering around South Park by herself without any traveling companions. She’d needed a place to stay in a bad way. And he figured Healing Springs Ranch was safe. Besides, they had the room. . . ….