A Blind Eye Read Online Free PDF

Corso sat on the hearth, bringing his face close to hers. “You okay?” he asked.
    She nodded, without meaning it. “Except for my hands,” she said, bringing them out from under the folds of her cape. Her hands looked like they’d been boiled. Swollen and red, they seemed to have a life of their own. “I froze them last night. They burn like hell.”
    “Keep them warm” was all Corso could think to say.
    “You should see yourself,” she said through her teeth as she slipped her hands back under the cape.
    “I have.”
    She started to get up, but Corso put a firm hand on her shoulder.
    “You saved my ass,” he said.
    She tried to elbow his hand from her shoulder, but he held firm. “You gotta lay down, Corso. You got something busted up in your head. For a while there I was afraid you were gonna bleed to death on me.”
    “You saved me,” he said again.
    “We saved each other’s asses,” she said. “You carried me half a mile through a blizzard.” She winced at the memory. “Craziest damn thing I ever saw. All I did was start a fire and keep it going.”
    As if on signal, the fire in the hearth collapsed upon itself with a rush of sparks. “Where’d you get the boards?” Corso asked.
    “There’s a barn outside.” She shrugged her shoulders. “There was nothing left in here to burn, so I decided to try out there. I fell through the floor. That’s when I froze my hands. Ripping up the old floorboards and dragging them inside.”
    Corso got to his feet. “We gotta keep the fire going. That’s how somebody’s gonna find us.”
    Dougherty began to protest and get to her feet.
    “Stay still,” Corso said. “I’m a little fuzzy, but I’m okay.”
    He brought one hand to the top of his head, as if to keep it in place, and then eased across the room and pulled open the door. The bright white reduced his eyes to slits. He stood in the doorway gulping the frigid air. The storm had passed, leaving behind a wind-whipped blanket of white reaching nearly to the tops of the fence posts lining the driveway. He stepped out onto the porch and drew the door closed. His shoulders shuddered inside his coat. He rubbed his hands together.
    For as far as the eye could see, the only marks on the surface of the snow were a ragged trail of footsteps leading to a leaning barn thirty yards north of the house. He walked slowly, lifting his knees high, trying not to jostle his head. Above him, boxcar clouds raced across a bright blue sky. The air twinkled with wind-blown snow crystals.
    It was more of a shed than a barn. No more than a dozen feet across. Listing heavily to starboard. A rusted split rim and a broken rake hung from the right-hand wall.
    She’d burned almost half the floor. Corso stepped inside and grabbed the broken end of one of the boards. The rotting wood crumbled in his hand as he forced it upward, pried it loose from its ancient nails, and then tossed it out into the trampled snow.
    Wasn’t until he tried to kick the nearest full board loose that he realized the other half of the floor was newer. No dry rot here. Just solid lumber nailed on two-foot centers along its length.
    Corso stepped carefully over the exposed floor joists, reached up over his head, and grabbed the rusted split rim hanging from the wall. Heavier than he’d imagined, the rim fell nearly to his knees before his muscles stopped its descent. A thick layer of rust crumbled in his hands as he retraced his steps. With a grunt he raised the rim above his head and brought it down on the nearest board. The board broke in two. Corso stepped to his right, repeating the process as he moved along, breaking the wood into two-foot lengths. By the time he’d worked his way to the rear of the building and back, his head was reeling and he thought for a moment he might pass out. His nose had begun to bleed again, sending an intermittent drizzle of blood down onto his shoes.
    He dropped the rim to the floor and was bent at the waist, waiting