In the Clear Read Online Free Page A

to him. At one point, Gerald actually looked as if he might be crying at the waste of it all, wiping away his tears with his knife.
    “Is it another reporter?” Fletcher asked, rubbing his eye sockets wearily. He’d gotten five phone calls and two visitors already. That was exactly five phone calls and two visitors he wished he could shove back under his cloak of secrecy. He could already feel the careful balance of his previous life slipping away. “I don’t suppose you could pretend I’m not here?”
    “She’s young and cute,” Clara offered. She batted her eyes again, as if young and cute were the only requirements he had. When he didn’t say anything, Clara sighed. “She also said I had to let her in on pain of death. Your death, specifically, at the hands of overgrown newts. She seems kind of odd.”
    Odd. Newts. That sounded an awful lot like . . .
    “Fletcher Patrick Owens, you have some serious explaining to do.” Lexie barreled through the door with a familiar printout in one hand, a greasy brown paper bag in the other. The smell of fried food hit his nose as she wedged her way into the tiny space. A tiny space, he might add, that seemed to be growing smaller by the second.
    She stabbed a finger at the paper. “Why does it look like you just plunged into a lake to save that woman?”
    He nodded once at Clara to show that although death was within Lexie’s extensive range of abilities, he was safe. For the time being.
    “Because I plunged into a lake to save that woman.”
    Lexie stopped in the act of removing her coat. She always seemed to have a thousand things on in the winter, what with all the sweaters and hats and gloves and scarves she needed to stay warm. He loved how efficiently the items went on and came off, her fruity perfume wafting up with each movement. He would have loved it even more if he was the one doing the removing, shucking layer after adorable layer, taking his time undoing the buttons along the front of her sweater, pausing to lift her hair from her neck as the scarf went . . .
    . . . WHOOSH.
    She snapped the scarf in his face and waved her hand. “Hello? Fletcher? I can’t believe this is your deep, dark secret. I can’t believe you didn’t tell us about this.” She barely paused long enough to pull in a breath. “And what are you doing? Eat. I brought food.”
    Grateful for the distraction lunch allowed him, Fletcher took his time assembling their things. Burger and fries for him, milkshake on the side. A tiny green salad for herself. He arranged his food neatly in front of him, being careful to put the fries in the middle of the desk. For as long as he could remember, Lexie had a habit of buying herself rabbit food and then proceeding to eat most of her companions’ side dishes, never aware of her wandering fork. He usually ordered extra of the things she liked for that reason—she had no idea he didn’t actually care for chocolate cake.
    She munched on a fry, watching him carefully.
    “What?” he asked when the silence loomed long enough to make him squirm. Of all the social situations he’d mastered in this lifetime, the appropriate reaction to having his face spread all over the internet wasn’t one he’d had a chance to work on before.
    “The time that family’s car went missing on Mt. Spokane . . . what was it, two years ago? You left my birthday party and no one heard from you for like three days.”
    He ducked his head. That one had been hard. There weren’t a lot of celebrations he could be bothered to attend, but a Sinclair party always made the list. “We were lucky the mom thought to burn the tires for heat.”
    A frown pulled at the soft corners of her mouth, a pucker in her brow. “And last month? The missing kid they found hiding in a dog house twelve blocks over?”
    “Grid search,” Fletcher confirmed. He hated grid searches. He also hated the cases with children. Both made him feel ineffective, forcing him to take one step at a time even