MacFarlane's Ridge Read Online Free Page A

at the girl. “Oh, come on. Lots of women wear their hair shoulder length. And plenty of us wear pants too. Or have you not been out much lately?” She felt as though she was talking in circles, and moved casually towards the phone.
    “D’ye ken the way to the gate or not?” the girl demanded, lower lip quivering. “It’s been near a year since the savages come, and I mun get back to Angus and Ian and wee Hamish, if the babe still be living! Me other babe died…” She had tears in her eyes.
    Cam had pressed the speed dial on her phone.
    “911, what’s your emergency?” asked a tinny voice.
    “Oh, hello, yes, there is a young lady in my house who seems confused about where she is,” said Cam, watching the girl Sarah, who was examining a bowl of fresh oranges. She gave the information to the dispatcher, who said she would send an officer over immediately.
    “Would you like one?” asked Cam. The girl sniffed the fruit suspiciously.
    “It smells queer,” she murmured. She opened her mouth and took a tentative bite.
    “No, no!” Cam grabbed it away. “You have to peel it. Like this.” She peeled the orange and pulled off a juicy wedge, giving it to the girl. Sarah’s eyes widened as she tasted the sweet fruit. The buzzer sounded at the side door. Suddenly the girl cowered in the corner, like a frightened animal.
    “Demons!” she hissed, quickly making the sign of the cross. Cameron ignored her, made sure there were no sharp knives or other potential weapons visible in the room, and scurried along the hall to the door. It was the new deputy, the nice one who had taken her report earlier in the day.
    “Sergeant Adams, what a pleasure,” she smiled. Under her breath she whispered, “You are going to just love this one.”
    When they got into the kitchen, the girl was gone, her half-eaten orange on the counter. The kitchen door stood wide open.
    Cam frowned. “Maybe she went back out to the garage, that’s where I first found her hiding.”
    As they stepped out onto the back step, she heard from the street a sound she was sure she would remember for the rest of her life. There was a blaring of horns, a screech of brakes, and the startled cry of an onlooker. Cam and Troy looked at each other in horror. They raced to the front of the house, Troy beating her there by only a step. In the near lane of Meador Street, a pickup truck had stopped at an odd angle, and a crowd was beginning to gather. It was dusk, and the streetlights had not yet come on, but Cameron could still see the frail brown shape and the tattered moccasins peeking out from under the truck.
     
     

Chapter Two
     
     
    Cam sat staring into her coffee at Alice’s place. Troy Adams sat across the booth from her, while Alice hovered nearby, her brassy orange hair a beacon in the fluorescent lighting.
    “Honey,” she drawled, “there was nothing you could have done. That poor girl didn’t have a clue where she was or what was happening. She’s probably better off now anyway.”
    Cam didn’t really think anyone was better off that had just been hit by a half-ton pickup truck, but she didn’t say anything. She knew Alice was just trying to help.
    Cam and the pickup’s driver had tried to save the girl with CPR, while Troy had radioed for an ambulance, but she had obviously been killed instantly. Her head had lolled at an unnatural angle, and Cam shivered at the memory.
    “Can you believe she had never even seen an orange?” she mumbled. “I had to peel it for her.”
    “Poor kid.” Troy shook his head. “She didn’t have any identification, and she doesn’t match any of my missing persons reports, although her name did sound slightly familiar for some reason. All we have to go on is what she told you. If no one claims her we’ll just have to have the county bury her.”
    Cam felt terrible. The girl would be buried in a pauper’s grave at the county’s expense, with no one to mourn her. And somewhere in the hills, there was