Dark Water (Cooper M. Reid Book 1) Read Free Page B

thought as he watched the woman inch back even further. He figured he probably had only five seconds and one more comment before she closed the door in his face.
    “I’m sorry,” Cooper said. “That was a terribly stupid thing for me to say. Let me try again. Is that okay?”
    The woman said nothing. She only nodded slowly, not really afraid, but awkwardly curious. Cooper knew that there was nothing immediately threatening about his appearance. At just under six feet tall and with cheeks that always appeared slightly pudgy despite his well-maintained frame, most people assumed that he was friendly by nature.
    “Are you Jenny Blackstock?” he aksed.
    “Yes. And you are…?”
    “My name is Cooper Reid,” he said. “I was hoping I could talk to you about the weird events you’ve been experiencing in your home.”
    Her curiosity shifted into shock. She pushed the door closed a bit more but still did not shut it. She remained quiet and Cooper used her hesitation to his advantage. He reached into his pocket and took out the two articles he had printed out five days ago. He unfolded the first one and showed it to Jenny Blackstock. He held it out to her with caution.
    “This is you, right?” he said.
    She looked to the article and her cheeks flushed with red. She looked up from the article, titled A Haunted Beachfront Home , and into Cooper’s face.
    “Where did you get this?” she asked.
    “The internet. The site isn’t very well known. But the guys that write for it do great research.”
    Jenny was clearly mad now and was having no more of it. She shook her head, and looked to the floor. “Please leave,” she said as politely as she could while closing the door.
    Dumbfounded, Cooper looked at the door and then down to the article. He folded it up slowly and then placed it back into his pocket. He had been expecting his initial conversation with the Blackstocks to be awkward, but not a straight-out failure. He hadn’t expected this at all.
    He still held the other folded article in his hands, not wanting the two articles to be connected, but somehow certain that they were. And now the one solid lead he had on either of them was refusing to speak to him.
    This made no sense. He had known to come here. In many ways, he had been asked to come here—although the Blackstocks clearly knew nothing about that.
    Not sure of what else to do, Cooper leaned forward and rested his hand on the front door, just below the little sand dollar ornament. He closed his eyes and focused on the texture of the wooden door beneath his palm. He tried to get a better sense of the place without the aid of sight, being guided by only the feel of the door beneath his hand.
    The porch smelled of sunlit wood but was almost entirely overpowered by the smell of the ocean behind the house. He took all of this in and listened to the muted roar of the sea, the crying of gulls nearby and, somewhere a few blocks over, someone cranking a motorcycle to life. His focus kept going back to the ocean and the slow yet hectic rhythm of the waves as they crashed along the shore.
    Hearing that, Cooper got what he needed.
    He pictured the waves at dusk, colored an aquatic golden green that no painter could ever get quite right. He saw this and he heard screaming in his head. He saw the image of a boy standing along the edge of the sea, looking out and pointing. He was wearing a pair of swimming trunks with a cartoon shark grinning widely and giving a thumbs-up. The boy was saying something as he pointed out to the ocean, but Cooper wasn’t sure what it was.The boy had tousled black hair and a slight scratch along his right temple.
    Cooper saw all of this with eerie definition, as if the boy were standing directly beside him on the Blackstock’s front porch.
    Then, in a flash, the boy was gone. More screaming followed as the vision or whatever it was dissipated. The screams were the terror-choked wails of a woman, and—
    Cooper opened his eyes and looked to