Free Kiera Hudson & The Adoring Artist (Kiera Hudson Series Three Book 3) by Tim O'Rourke

hill.

 
    Chapter Fourteen
     
    The river wound its way back up the side of the hill as I followed it. Potter walked just a little way behind, his head down, a cigarette jutting from the corner of his lips. When I glanced back, he looked deep in thought, like he was trying to analyse some internal conflict – battling some internal demon that was trying to possess him. Was it my Potter that he was having an internal struggle with? Was there some way that I might be able to draw the real Potter out? But the Potter that trailed behind me in the growing dark was real – he was real in this where and when . He had a real life with real friends. He had a fiancée who was carrying his child. So would it be fair of me to entice my Potter forward to overshadow and finally consume the Potter from this where and when ? But something told me that everything wasn’t quite right in this place. Something told me that there was more going on beneath the surface that I had yet to discover and figure out. My instincts told me there was something very unreal going on in this where and when . For instance, the name, Lois Li. I wasn’t convinced now that it was someone’s name. I was starting to doubt that any such person existed. Those letters were part of a riddle that I would only figure out if I unearthed the complete inscription that had once been written at the foot of that statue. The true question was, who was behind the riddle and why did they want me to solve it? And I would solve it. There was no doubt about that. Tempting me with a riddle was like showing a red flag to a bull. I was going to charge right at it. It was what I did. It was all I’d ever known. I would solve the riddle. I would see who was behind it. I was Kiera Hudson.
    I looked up to see how far we had come and stopped. I could see a flash of orange set back from the river between the nearby trees. I peered into the fast growing darkness at whatever it was.
    “There,” I said to Potter as he drew level with me.
    “There, what?” Potter said, flicking the butt of his cigarette into the stream.
    “Someone has made camp,” I said, creeping forward. The flash of orange I had seen was a small tent.
    “Wait, Kiera,” Potter said, placing one hand on my arm. “Anyone could be in that tent.”
    I glanced back at him. “Like who?”
    “I dunno, maybe a couple of lovers. They could be having some jiggy-jiggy and they might not be happy to discover you peering through the tent flaps at them,” Potter said.
    Without saying anything, I took my phone from my pocket and pressed Nev’s number with my thumb. After just a few short seconds, I heard the sound of his phone ringing from the direction of the small orange coloured tent. “This is where Nev made camp,” I said, placing the phone back into my pocket and heading toward the tent. Potter followed close behind.
    “Neville!” he suddenly called out. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
    “Shhh!” I hissed back at him. “This isn’t some sort of joke.”
    “Who’s laughing?” Potter said, prodding at a pile of ash with his boot.
    “Stop doing that, you could be destroying clues,” I warned him.
    “Clues? It’s a burnt out campfire, that’s all,” Potter groaned.
    “It might be able to tell us who took Nev,” I said, my voice little more than a whisper.
    “Who took Neville?” Potter mocked. “How do you figure that out by looking at some old campfire?”
    “Look,” I said. “What do you see?”
    “That he was a messy little fucker,” Potter said.
    “This mess has been caused by some kind of struggle,” I said, pointing down at the overturned camping equipment, the discarded sleeping bag, and torn clothes that lay strewn before the tent.
    “He might have just got spooked and run off,” Potter said.
    “So what spooked him?” I said, pulling open the flaps of the tent and crawling inside.
    “I dunno, an owl hooting or something,” Potter said.
    “Give me a break,” I sighed