Siren's Call by Jayne Castle

Author:Jayne Castle [Castle, Jayne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780515155747
Amazon: 0515155748
Publisher: Jove
Published: 2015-07-27T14:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

The damn rain made it impossible to see anything but vague shadows.

Ken Maitland huddled in the limited shelter provided by the roof of the boathouse and listened to the downpour. It drummed on the opaque surface of the lake, muffling other sounds. He hated the way it rained on Rainshadow.

He had been on the island for nearly a week waiting for his chance. In that length of time he had come to hate everything about the place—the rain, the weird fog, the creepy energy that seemed to be everywhere. He could not wait to get the hell off the rock, but he was not about to leave until he had made the big score.

He had followed an old girlfriend into the Do Not Disturb movement. The scam hadn’t deceived him, not for a minute. He had been on the streets long enough to recognize a fellow con artist when he met one. He had recognized Houston Radburn, the guru of DND, as a fraud right from the start. It took one to know one, Ken thought. But he had seen the opportunities immediately.

His computer skills had helped him advance rapidly within the organization. Thanks to him the donations had tripled within a few months. Ken had discreetly siphoned off some of the take into a private bank account. He deserved a commission.

Radburn had been delighted with the cash flow situation for a while, but lately he had started to become suspicious of his sharp new fund-raiser. It was time to bail, Ken thought. But not before he pulled off one last score.

He could hear the black water lapping gently beneath the boards of the dock. In the weak glare of the boathouse’s light fixture he caught glimpses of the strange snakeweed plant that choked the lake. The vines coiled and writhed just below the surface.

He’d heard one of the locals say that falling into the lake was a death sentence. The weed twisted around the body and dragged it down into the depths. The lake never gave up its dead, according to the island residents.

That unnerving fact didn’t seem to bother the people who called Rainshadow home, Maitland reflected. They took the scary lake in stride, the same way they did all the other bizarre things on the island. The place had once been an Alien biolab. You’d think that would be more than enough reason to make any normal person pack up and get on the ferry. But as far as he could tell, the residents accepted the hair-raising results of the ancient experiments as just part and parcel of the landscape.

But, then, having been on Rainshadow for a while, he had concluded that the locals were as weird as the island itself. He was sure that the chief of police was some kind of talent and so was his wife, the owner of the antiques shop. Maybe the energy on the island actually changed people. Maybe they were all psi-burned or something.

Maybe the Do Not Disturb outfit had a point.

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