A Time of Torment Read Online Free PDF Page A

stranger stepped into the room, the light catching the white markings in his hair before losing itself in the cold fire of his eyes.
    And deep inside Roger Ormsby, the Gray Man whispered the hunter’s name, and tried to find a hiding place in the disused hollows of his heart.

6
    B ack, back through the years, to a younger Ormsby, and the first warning that the hunter might someday come …
    Ormsby wouldn’t have called it blackmail, exactly. Oh, the threat was there, and it was made explicit to him by the woman who had arrived at his door shortly after he’d killed a boy named Joseph Slocum, who’d made the mistake of running off to sulk in a culvert near his home after an argument with his mother. The smell of his burning still lingered in the basement, and a new game was about to begin.
    Ormsby had been surprised by how much the woman knew about him: she didn’t have all the names, just two, but her information was enough to damn him, especially since it included photographs of him snatching the boy. They looked like they’d been taken through darkened glass, and Ormsby vaguely recollected a van parked nearby when he’d taken Slocum.
    But the woman didn’t want to give what she had to the police. Instead, she offered Ormsby a deal: her silence in return for a favor, should it be asked of him, and he had acquiesced because, really, what choice did he have? Five years went by, and Ormsby had begun to believe that the debt might never be called in when the woman contacted him again. This time, she gave him the name of a child – a girl – and the time and place at which she would be most vulnerable. The woman would even arrange for the girl’s mother to be otherwise occupied – a fire in a trash can, nothing serious – to give Ormsby the time he needed.
    Ormsby did as he was asked. He didn’t even need to know the reason why the child had to disappear, because he could guess it. He wasn’t a fool. The parents of a missing child have no time for any concerns other than their own, and, handled correctly, such a disappearance guaranteed a lifetime of distraction. This particular girl’s parents – campaigners, proselytizers, do-gooders – just needed to be turned aside from their mission. So Ormsby took the girl and began a fresh game, and the woman never contacted him again, except to give him that warning about luck and care, and the importance of remaining silent.
    And now the test was about to begin.
    Parker walked past Ormsby without giving him another glance and approached the girl. He saw her grip tighten instinctively on Angel’s hand. Parker went down on one knee before her, like a man paying homage to the image of a saint.
    ‘You’re Charlotte, right?’ he asked.
    She nodded.
    ‘But your family calls you Charlie.’
    Another nod.
    ‘That’s my name, too.’
    She looked dubious, but Angel squeezed her hand and said, ‘It’s true.’
    ‘So, may I call you Charlie, as one to another?’
    She looked to Angel, and he nodded.
    ‘Yes,’ she said.
    ‘Thank you. In a few minutes, Charlie, we’re going to contact your parents, and the police, and we’ll tell them to come get you. But first, we need to talk with this man here – his name is Ormsby, although you don’t need to worry about that – because we don’t think you’re the first child he’s taken, and out there are other mommies and daddies who’ve lost sons and daughters to him. We can’t bring their children back, but we can give their moms and dads a little peace by letting them know the truth.
    ‘But I understand what you’ve been through, and it may be that you don’t want to wait. So if you ask it, we’ll make the call to your parents right now, and hope that the police can get what they need from Mr Ormsby back at the station. My guess, though, is that Mr Ormsby will tell them nothing. You see, we got to him just a little too late, otherwise we’d have stopped him from taking you. But unless someone saw what happened,