Echoes Read Free

stared at the smiling sisters. "Are you sure you weren't adopted? You don't look anything like her."
    Tess paused with a handful of underwear in her hand and looked over Sara's shoulder at the picture. Tori was a mixture of darkness and vivid color. Beside her sister, Tess had always felt transparent.
    "She looks like my mom. I got the honor of looking like the Colonel." Tess crammed her underclothes into the suitcase and shut it. "I keep thinking of the last time Tori did this. I got a call from the cops at three a.m. Tori was gone, her boyfriend's place was trashed and the guy's brother was sure they were both dead. I spent three days in a panic, a fourth convinced she'd been murdered and then, lo and behold, who should come strolling up on the fifth. Tanned, rested and stunned that anyone might have been worried about them."
    "Where were they?"
    "They'd had a fight and then took off to make up someplace romantic. It's the way she is."
    "So why are you running around like a maniac to get there now?"
    As Tess pulled her bag off the bed, she looked at her friend, answers coming at her in images that would take too long to explain. Finally she said, "Because she's my sister. We grew up with the Colonel preaching 'do unto others' while he acted like God himself. We moved every five minutes, so neither one of us had any friends. And after my mom checked into La La Land—Well, it wasn't exactly the nurturing environment you might imagine. We were there for each other though. She and Caitlin are the only family I have left. I love them. And besides, Caitlin's just a little girl. She shouldn't have to pay for Tori's mistakes."
     
    Chapter Three
     
    When the call came in that afternoon, Deputy Hector Ochoa didn't think much of it. Mountain Bend had its drunks and troublemakers like everyplace else, but they rarely got going before nine or ten at night. A call before suppertime was as likely a wrong number as anything serious. He didn't even bother to put down the sports page as he answered the phone.
    The voice on the other end, however, got his attention. Hector listened for a moment, his mouth going dry before he assured the caller they'd be right there. His excitement made him speak overly loud and he banged down the receiver.
    Sheriff Smith looked up from the business section with a frown. He'd been gone most of the day and had only just plopped down in his chair to grumble over the stock market.
    "That was Grant Weston," Hector said.
    "The actor?"
    Hector nodded. "He said he needs us out at his ranch right away."
    "What happened? His hair get messed up?"
    "Sounded like he'd had the crap scared out of him."
    "He didn't tell you what the problem was?"
    Hector faltered. "Well, no."
    "And you didn't bother to ask?" Smith demanded. "For Christ sake, Ochoa, didn't they teach you anything at the academy?" With a muttered curse, he flung down his paper and stood. Every day of Smith's thirty years as Chicago PD showed on his face and in the hard eyes he pinned Hector with. "You always ask. You don't know if he's got a gun to his head or his cat's stuck in a tree, do you? Do you?"
    Knowing he'd just shot himself in the foot— again —Hector shook his head.
    "No," Smith said.
    To his credit, he left it at that. He didn't need to say more. From his first day, Sheriff Eugene Smith had made two things clear. One—he'd come to Mountain Bend this year to escape the grind of big city crime, not to work with amateurs and idiots. And two—never, under any circumstances, call him Eugene.
    Silently Hector followed the sheriff to the car and got in. Smith eased himself into the driver's seat, his paunch making a tight fit beneath the wheel. He claimed to have given up the bottle the same time that he'd tossed his last pack of Marlboros in the trash, but he still looked like a man who'd spent too many years drinking whiskey straight and inhaling smoke. Fine red capillaries made a map across his nose before branching into tributaries of abuse