Little Girl Lost (Georgiana Germaine #1) - Cheryl Bradshaw Page 0,2

I?” I replied. “I’m all alone out here. There’s no one around for miles.”

“Still, you should always lock it. You never know who could be lurkin’ around.”

“You’re lurking around. Should I be worried?”

He arced the flashlight in my direction, and his face went red. “You wanna put a robe on or something so we can talk?”

I assessed my current attire, a short, strappy, black cotton nightie and knee-high wool socks. On the top end I was a bit bare, but I still offered more coverage than a teenage girl at the beach. I didn’t see a problem. “I don’t own a robe.”

He pointed at the bottom of the bed. “How ‘bout you cover yourself up with one of those blankets, then?”

I sighed, yanked a blanket off the pile, and draped it over me. “Why are you here, Harvey?”

He ignored the question, opting to survey my Airstream from back to front instead. “Wow. So, this is how you’re livin’ now. It’s, ahh ... well, it’s ...”

“Nice,” I said. “Nice and quiet.”

“Quiet. Yeah, I imagine it would be. Too quiet, if you ask me.”

I hadn’t asked him.

“That’s the point of being out here,” I said. “I want to be alone.”

“You achieved it. You’re alone all right, and your hair, well, it sure is colorful.”

I reached above my head and pressed on the light, illuminating the room. “I drive to the nearest town every week or two to grab some groceries and do my washing. You want to know something? When I’m there, all I can think about is how fast I can get back out here again.”

He frowned. “Guess I was hoping you’d make your way back to civilization at some stage. You’ve been out here ... what, a year and a half now?”

“One year, nine months, and three days.”

“Long time.”

I shrugged. “I guess so.”

I’d known Harvey since I was too young to remember. On Sunday nights, he’d come to the house with a couple other guys, and they’d play cards with my father. Harvey and my father were detectives in San Luis Obispo until the night my dad was blindsided by a pickup truck on his way home. The truck had crashed into my father’s car with such force it had split his car in half. The impact crushed him, and he died well before the ambulance arrived. The driver of the truck fled the scene and was never captured. It was the first time my life changed forever, and back then, I thought nothing would ever exceed the pain I’d felt.

I was wrong.

So wrong.

Harvey rubbed his fingers along his chin and said, “I need you to come home. It’s time.”

“I’m retired now. Besides, I have no interest in coming back.”

“Maybe not. I still need you to, okay?”

“You need me to, or you want me to? There’s a difference. Are you talking to me as the chief of police or as my stepdad?

“Both.”

He walked to the table, picked up a book set I had sitting on the bench, and sat down, folding his arms in front of him.

“Careful with that,” I said. “It may not look like it, but it’s rare, worth about fifteen thousand.”

He eyed the title on the green cloth cover with interest. “Sense and Sensibility. Never heard of it. Where did you get it?”

“A friend gave it to me. Someone I knew many years ago. I’d done him a favor, and he bought it for me because he knew it was my favorite.”

“Must have been some favor.”

It was.

He placed the book set on the table like it was made of thin, delicate glass. “This camping life you have going ... it isn’t a life. It’s something else. You know it’s true.”

“If you’re about to say it’s me running away instead of facing my demons, don’t bother. I’ve heard it multiple times already.”

He nodded and stared at me for a moment. “How long are you going to keep beating yourself up over what happened?”

Forever. And even then, it wouldn’t be long enough.

“I lost everything, Harvey,” I said. “My marriage, my job, my ... my ...”

I let the unfinished sentence hang in limbo without saying the one word I couldn’t bring myself to deliver.

“You didn’t lose your job,” he said. “You left it. What happened was awful. We all agree. But you can’t lock yourself away forever. It isn’t healthy.”

I tossed the damp pillow to one side and leaned against the wall. “You know why I can’t come back. Cambria is a small town. Too small. Everyone talks. Half the