Something Wicked Read Free

regulation, but in her condition she didn’t much care.
    She had caught the call that had come into the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department, and had said she would check out the abandoned property that was reported to have evidence of squatters. She was driving back from lunch, and Bankruptcy Bluff—well, Bancroft Bluff, though anyone who knew the tale of the doomed homes slowly sliding off the dune into the Pacific referred to the debacle by its nickname—was right on her way.
    Now she pulled up cautiously in front of one of the mammoth homes. It sat well back from the cliff, but if Mother Nature had her way, the house might eventually become an abandoned ruin as well. The lawsuits over this construction folly were ongoing and vicious. All that was needed was for some vagrant to either burn the place down or get in some accident where he was injured or killed.
    Her cell phone buzzed. She picked it up and glanced down at its face as she was opening her door. Clausen. Her unofficial partner at the moment. Grimacing, knowing what she would hear, she answered cautiously, “Hey, there.”
    â€œSavannah, what the goddamn hell? Don’t you dare go into that building alone! You shouldn’t be there.”
    She found herself irked beyond measure. They all treated her like she was porcelain these days. “Then get your ass down here, Fred,” she snapped.
    â€œI’m on my way. Don’t go in there!”
    â€œI’ll wait,” she said, punching the off button on her phone.
    Over the past six months she’d changed from the quiet newbie on the force to the impatient, growling pregnant woman with no sense of humor. Well, too damn bad. Yes, pregnancy had transformed her, and yes, everyone in the department wanted to baby and coddle her, and yes, there was a part of her that appreciated it, but damn it all . . . she could still make her own choices. Being knocked up hadn’t addled her brain.
    Much.
    She grimaced as she stepped outside, feeling the cold drops fall on her head. She quickly pulled up the hood of her jacket before the precipitation could flatten her hair to her scalp. The reasons for agreeing to become her sister’s surrogate were actually getting a little harder to remember. Kristina had begged, begged, begged her to help her have a baby, as she and her husband, Hale, were unable to conceive. Savannah had reluctantly agreed, even going so far as to volunteer to be a surrogate. In actual fact it was a gestational pregnancy: the embryo created by Kristina’s egg and Hale’s sperm had been implanted into Savannah’s womb. She was merely the vessel to give them their heart’s desire, except . . . recently she’d wondered if her sister was really feeling the same all-consuming need to be a mother. She’d been so gung ho, almost desperate, in the beginning, but as her due date approached, Savannah had sensed a weakening in Kristina’s ardor to join the ranks of motherhood. Troubling, especially when Hale St. Cloud’s enthusiasm had always been a little hard for Savannah to read. But then Hale was part Bancroft, as in Bancroft Bluff, and he was involved in the family real estate business with his grandfather, Declan Bancroft, an irascible entrepreneur who’d begun Bancroft Development decades before. Though Savvy had met Declan only a handful of times, it was clear he was a real piece of work, and she figured that Hale was probably cut from the same cloth.
    But their baby boy was on his way, and they both were going to have to step up and soon. Savannah kept telling herself that once the baby was here, their maternal and paternal instincts would kick in. They all, herself included, were just feeling the predelivery jitters.
    Expelling her breath, she looked toward the largest house in this cul-de-sac cluster. The Donatellas’. Right on the cliff’s edge and being eroded underneath. She knew it well, as it had been the scene