Free Carolina Isle by Jude Deveraux

welcome some money.”
    â€œWhere are the people?” Ariel asked from the back.
    No one had a reply.
    R.J. glanced at the car clock. It was 1:30. “How soon do you think we can leave this place and get back to the mainland? Didn’t anyone see when the next ferry ran?”
    â€œI don’t like this place,” Sara whispered.
    R.J. took a left at the end of the street and entered a tree-lined residential area. There was one huge, old Victorian house after another. Each one needed painting and a lot of repairs. Some had windows with paper taped over them. Fallen trees had been left where they hit the ground.
    On the corner was an especially big house. It was brick, with dark green shutters that had been recently painted. There was a faded sign in the window: ROOMS TO LET .
    â€œShall we spend the night?” R.J. asked, trying to dispel the gloom in the car.
    Silence was his answer. So much for humor,Sara thought. The hairs on her forearms were standing upright.
    All of them were looking at the houses so hard that no one was watching the road carefully. Sara yelled, “Look out!” and R.J. swerved to miss the dog that was lying in the middle of the road. He ran the car up onto the sidewalk and winced when he heard it scrape the bottom on the flaking concrete curb.
    Sara jumped out of the car before he’d turned the engine off and ran toward the dog. R.J. followed her, with Ariel and David on his heels. Sara was crouched down by the dog when they got there.
    â€œIt’s been dead a while,” she said, looking up at R.J.
    â€œAnd wasn’t well cared for while it was alive,” David said in disgust. “The poor thing looks as though it was starved to death.”
    Ariel said nothing. Too frightened to move, she stood close to David, her eyes downcast.
    â€œYeah,” R.J. said, looking about the place. The silence in the town was eerie. All they heard were birds chirping. No cars, trucks, no planes, not even any boats.
    â€œDo you think anyone lives in these houses?” Sara whispered into the silence.
    â€œNot people I’d want to know if they’d treat a dog like this,” David said.
    â€œMaybe it was old and—” R.J. began.
    David cut him off. “Look at it! That dog isn’t more than a year old, if that. I don’t think it’s even fully grown, but it’s been so mistreated that—”
    Ariel took David’s hand in hers and he calmed down.
    â€œI think we should go,” Sara said. “This place gives me the creeps.”
    â€œHow about if we take some photos, then leave?” R.J. said.
    â€œYes,” Ariel whispered, still holding David’s hand. She looked as though she was standing in the middle of a haunted house.
    Sara, seeming to forget her disguise, silently held out her hand to R.J. for the keys, then went to the car and got his camera out of the trunk. She was soon clicking away as fast as a digital camera could go, making a circle of the street. “Done,” she said. “So let’s go find out when the next ferry runs to take us out of here.”
    Everyone nodded in agreement.
    But David held back. “We can’t leave the dog where it is. We have to at least move it out of the road.” He started to pick it up by himself, but R.J. took one end of it and they set it on the far sidewalk, out of the way.
    â€œI think I should tell someone about the dog,” David said as he started toward the nearest house.
    â€œI think we should get the girls out of here,” R.J. said loudly.
    For a moment David seemed torn between his sense of chivalry and his love of animals. But then he looked at Ariel’s white face, and she won.
    No one said anything as they got back into the car.
    R.J. drove slowly back through the town, pausing now and then so Sara could snap photos out of the window. “I’ll have a lot to show Charley,” he said, forcing cheerfulness into his voice,