Sanctuary Read Free

jittery and her head ached, no one knew the weakness but herself.
    Below her kitchen window, the streets were dark and empty, slicked by late-winter rain. A streetlamp spread a small pool of light—lonely light, Jo thought. There was no one to bask in it. Aloneness had such mystery, she mused. Such endless possibilities.
    It pulled at her, as such scenes often did, and she found herself leaving the scent of coffee, grabbing her Nikon, and rushing out barefoot into the chilly night to photograph the deserted street.
    It soothed her as nothing else could. With a camera in her hand and an image in her mind, she could forget everything else. Her long feet splashed through chilly puddles as she experimented with angles. With absent annoyance she flicked at her hair. It wouldn’t be falling in her face if she’d had it trimmed. But she’d had no time, so it swung heavily forward in a tousled wave and made her wish for an elastic band.
    She took nearly a dozen shots before she was satisfied. When she turned, her gaze was drawn upward. She’d left the lights on, she mused. She hadn’t even been aware she’d turned on so many on the trip from bedroom to kitchen.
    Lips pursed, she crossed the street and focused her camera again. Calculating, she crouched, shot at an upward angle, and captured those lighted windows in the dark building. Den of the Insomniac , she decided. Then with a half laugh that echoed eerily enough to make her shudder, she lowered the camera again.
    God, maybe she was losing her mind. Would a sane woman be out at three in the morning, half dressed and shivering, while she took pictures of her own windows?
    She pressed her fingers against her eyes and wished more than anything else for the single thing that had always seemed to elude her. Normality.
    You needed sleep to be normal, she thought. She hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in more than a month. You needed regular meals. She’d lost ten pounds in the last few weeks and had watched her long, rangy frame go bony. You needed peace of mind. She couldn’t remember if she had ever laid claim to that. Friends? Certainly she had friends, but no one close enough to call in the middle of the night to console her.
    Family. Well, she had family, of sorts. A brother and sister whose lives no longer marched with hers. A father who was almost a stranger. A mother she hadn’t seen or heard from in twenty years.
    Not my fault, Jo reminded herself as she started back across the street. It was Annabelle’s fault. Everything had changed when Annabelle had run from Sanctuary and left her baffled family crushed and heartbroken. The trouble, as Jo saw it, was that the rest of them hadn’t gotten over it. She had.
    She hadn’t stayed on the island guarding every grain of sand like her father did. She hadn’t dedicated her life to running and caring for Sanctuary like her brother, Brian. And she hadn’t escaped into foolish fantasies or the next thrill the way her sister, Lexy, had.
    Instead she had studied, and she had worked, and she had made a life for herself. If she was a little shaky just now, it was only because she’d overextended, was letting the pressure get to her. She was a little run-down, that was all. She’d just add some vitamins to her regimen and get back in shape.
    She might even take a vacation, Jo mused as she dug her keys out of her pocket. It had been three years—no, four—since she had last taken a trip without a specific assignment. Maybe Mexico, the West Indies. Someplace where the pace was slow and the sun hot. Slowing down and clearing her mind. That was the way to get past this little blip in her life.
    As she stepped back into the apartment, she kicked a small, square manila envelope that lay on the floor. For a moment she simply stood, one hand on the door, the other holding her camera, and stared at it.
    Had it been there when she left? Why was it there in the first