Read Online A Dark Lure by Loreth Anne White - Free Book Online

no online reference to this particular Olivia West prior to eight years ago. No social media links. Zip. He heard his seating section being called and closed his laptop, grabbed his bag. As he joined the queue to board, Olivia’s words taunted him . . .
    . . . You’re no survivor, you know that? You know dick about surviving. All you know is your own narcissistic pursuit . . .
    What did she know about survivors that made her so angry with him? While he knew squat about her, she certainly knew personal things about him, and she’d judged and found him wanting. Curiosity nibbled at him.
    He handed over his passport and boarding pass.
    A woman with a mystery past? Exerting undue influence over his tough-ass father—the man who’d put his dead wife on a pedestal to the detriment of the rest of the family? It was unlikely.
    Just as unlikely as him going home after all these years.

    Broken Bar Ranch. Friday. Dawn.
    Temperatures had dropped below freezing during the night. Down near the dock, red rose hips and dead leaves sparkled with diamonds of hoarfrost. The sun hadn’t yet broken over the mountains, and mist rose in ghostly tendrils off the mirror-still lake. Trout darted in shallows beneath the untroubled surface.
    Early morning gunshots cracked through the hills, echoing through the valley. Olivia huddled deeper into her down jacket, frosted grass crunching beneath her boots as she tramped out a half-mile track for Ace to follow, dropping scented articles at intervals along the way—bits and pieces of fabric, a leather glove, some wood, plastic bag ties, a hair clip . . . items she’d stashed under her sheet while she slept so that they’d absorb her scent. She was still pissed at Cole McDonough’s rudeness. Arrogant, self-indulgent, narcissistic drunk. What kind of man had zero interest in his dying father?
    Yet she remained selfishly relieved he wasn’t coming.
    Once the track was laid, Olivia circled around and back to her cabin. She stomped up the three steps onto her small porch that looked out over the misty lake. A loon quavered out on the water.
    Behind the door Ace was snuffling, whining.
    “Whoa, old boy,” she said as he tried to nose through the door the instant she opened it a crack. “Go wait on your mat.”
    He dutifully obeyed, panting, watching her with milky eyes as she took out his tracking line and harness.
    Crouching down near the door, harness and line in hand, she called him over. “Okay, boy, you wanna track? Huh? Come on then!”
    Ace squiggled excitedly over. Her heart did a funny little squeeze as he tried to lick her face while she clipped on his tracking harness. She loved him with all her heart. He was about eight years old now—not ancient for a German shepherd by any means, but he’d had a rocky start in life, and it was showing. His teeth were ground down to nubs, and he was having some trouble with his hips. He was also going blind.
    She’d found him just over three years ago along a deactivated logging road shortly after she’d released herself from hospital. The bandages around her wrists had been fresh, and she’d gone straight from the hospital to the liquor store. Her goal had been to drive out into the wilderness, get drunk, and end her life properly this time, where no good Samaritan who happened to be a paramedic could rescue her again in the nick of time.
    She’d made good inroads into a bottle of vodka and shouldn’t have been behind a wheel at all. But it was almost winter, the logging roads empty, and she was driving to nowhere when she’d slowed at the sight of a matted brown-and-black shape lying on the side of the road. She’d thought it was wildlife roadkill at first. But something made her stop.
    With shock she’d realized it was a dog and it was alive—a bag of bones in mangy fur, unable to walk, with eyes so beseeching it had clean broken her in two. Carefully she’d felt the animal’s body and had detected fractured bones. She’d