Читать книгу A Forever Home - Lynn Patrick - Страница 9

PROLOGUE

AN UNUSUAL NOISE woke Cora Stanton at two-fifteen a.m.

At least she thought it was a noise.

Squinting at her illuminated bedside clock, she groggily rose to her elbows, listening intently. There was plenty to hear with the wind whipping around the creaking eaves of the old mansion and the crash of waves as Lake Michigan hit the shore some yards away. The shadow of branches clawed at the wall nearest the bed.

But it wasn’t branches scraping or the wind or the waves she’d heard...

It had been a thud.

Cora jumped as she heard the sound again. She sat up, trying to locate where the noise had come from. Definitely inside the house. But where?

No one was sleeping on this side of the house but her. Her flesh crawled at the thought of a stranger creeping around the passage outside or messing about in another room.

Not wanting to turn on a light and alert the intruder, she crept out of bed and went to the door. She turned the lock, then grasped the knob to crack the door slightly for a view of the hallway outside. Nothing. No one. It seemed empty and quiet in the faint glow of a nightlight.

She stood there for several minutes, waiting, listening...until her feet got cold.

No more thuds. No thumps.

Closing the door, she locked it again and made her way back toward the bed and her slippers lying beside it. Could her imagination have been playing tricks on her? Easy enough to conjure up noises on a windy night in a big, old house.

As she slid into the slippers and grabbed her robe from a nearby chair, she had second thoughts. Surely she’d lived here long enough to distinguish familiar sounds from strange ones. She’d definitely heard something. Could it have come from the attic? Squirrels had gotten in once and maybe they’d found their way back again. She’d have to call the exterminators tomorrow.

There was nothing she could do now except go back to sleep. But the adrenaline flowing through her veins had wakened her completely. She’d go downstairs and fix herself some warm cocoa.

Pausing in front of the windows overlooking the trees and the beach and lake beyond them, she glimpsed a sudden movement. Was it a person? She froze, then pulled back the curtain. In the dim light of a waning moon, something dark and human-shaped darted out of the shadows. It stopped, swung around...

“Ah!” breathed Cora.

Then just as quickly, the figure disappeared, blending into darkness again.

Now it was her pulse that thudded in her ears.