A Child Is Missing Read Online Free PDF Page A

Please, don’t take Jo and the dog both. Please.
    He ran again, his snowshoes bursting through the crust as he went down the slope toward the flames. He screamed as he tripped and fell. He had to get up, had to get up so he could see. If he kept watching, Jo would appear, waving to him. The dog would be with her. She and the dog could not be in the flames, could not be.
    He screamed as loudly as he could, trying to say Jo’s name.
    In the dark, the big dog snarled, barked, then growled in bewilderment. The hermit sat up in bed, eyes wide, until he could make out the blue-black rectangle of the window against the darkness. The dog snorted, perhaps annoyed with him for disturbing its sleep again.
    â€œWolf,” he whispered.
    The dog bounded up on the bed, stretched his body—a hundred-plus pounds of sinew, bone, and muscle—alongside the man’s.
    â€œGood Wolf. Good Wolf. Go to sleep.”
    He felt safe now, with the dog breathing next to him, safe enough to try to sleep again. He closed his eyes. Then he rubbed the sweat from his forehead and cheeks with the back of his hand, feeling the burn scars on his face.

Six
    Will hated hospitals, and this day he would rather have been almost anywhere. He’d had a fitful sleep at the Long Creek Inn, at the edge of town. Now he dearly wanted to be home.
    Like so much else about Long Creek, the hospital was depressing and dark. The hospital smell, a mixture of floor wax, alcohol, and vomit, made his breakfast sit uneasily in his nervous stomach.
    â€œYou’ll have to put on a gown,” the nurse said. “And your visit will be limited to fifteen minutes.”
    â€œFine,” Will said. “Can he, uh…?”
    â€œHe drifts in and out, if that’s what you mean. The crash trauma itself was bad enough, especially the rib piercing the lung. He had a lot of bleeding, some of it internal.”
    They were outside the intensive-care unit now. The nurse (about Will’s age, handsome, businesslike but not unfriendly) handed him a pale orange gown.
    â€œHold out your arms,” the nurse said. “There. It goes on backward, just like a lobster bib. Fifteen minutes.”
    Fran Spicer’s head was propped on pillows and swathed in clean white bandages. A clear plastic tube ran into his nose, another into one arm. The exposed part of his face was yellow-purple with bruises.
    Will sat in a stiff metal chair at the foot of the bed. He glanced at the beds on either side (a man lay in one, a woman in the other, both very old and thin), then looked again at Fran. The eyes were closed, the lids puffed and purplish.
    â€œAh, Frannie,” Will whispered. “It’s okay. It’s okay. It was our fault, Frannie. Ours.”
    When Will had started as a reporter at the Gazette, back around the time some of his young staff members were in diapers, Fran Spicer was covering Bessemer city hall. Covering it well, too, or at least as well as the publisher would let him. Fran Spicer had shown Will the ropes, had taught him a great deal about city government and the ethnic crazy quilt that defined city politics.
    Fran had spent way too much time at a tavern owned by a city councilman, drinking far into the night, long after he had picked up the latest political gossip. Throw in some marriage problems, some unpaid bills, add some more drinking…
    â€œAh, Fran. I’m so sorry. We shouldn’t have sent you, old friend. It’s not your fault.”
    The eyes opened slightly, focused on Will, glistened in recognition.
    â€œHi, Fran. Rest easy, old friend.”
    The eyes opened wider despite the puffiness. The lips moved.
    â€œIt’s okay, Fran. Don’t try to talk. Just rest.”
    But the eyes shone brighter through the slits in the puffiness, and the lips moved again.
    Will leaned forward, held his breath to hear.
    â€œThe story of my life,” Fran said softly. “The story of my life.” The eyes rolled