Beyond Reach Read Online Free PDF Page B

let two whole weeks pass without calling to check on him.
    In the end, it was Charlotte, one of Hank’s neighbors, who called to tell Lena that she needed to come down and see about her uncle.
    “He’s in a bad way,” the woman had said. When Lena tried to press her, Charlotte had mumbled something about one of her kids needing her and hung up the phone.
    Lena felt her spine straighten as she drove into the Reese city limits. God, she hated this town. At least in Grant, she fit in. Here, however, she would always be the orphan, the troublemaker, Hank Norton’s niece—no, not Sibyl, Lena, the bad one.
    She passed three churches in rapid succession. There was a big billboard by the baseball field that read, “Today’s Forecast: Jesus Reigns!”
    “Christ,” she murmured, taking a left onto Kanuga Road, her body on autopilot as she coasted through the back streets that led to Hank’s house.
    Classes weren’t out for another hour, but there were enough cars leaving the high school to cause a traffic jam. Lena slowed, hearing the muffled strains of competing radio stations as souped-up muscle cars stripped their tires on the asphalt.
    A guy in a blue Mustang, the old kind that drove like a truck and had a metal dashboard that could decapitate you if you hit the right tree, pulled up in the lane beside her. Lena turned her head and saw a teenage kid openly staring at her. Gold chains around his neck sparkled in the afternoon sun and his ginger-red hair was spiked with so much gel that he looked more like something you’d find at the bottom of the ocean than in a small Southern town. Oblivious to how stupid he looked, his head bobbed with the rap music pounding out of his car stereo and he gave her a suggestive wink. Lena looked away, thinking she’d like to see his spoiled white ass dropped off in the middle of downtown Atlanta on a Friday night. He’d be too busy pissing his pants to appreciate the gangsta life.
    She turned off at the next street, taking the long way to Hank’s, wanting to get away from the kids and traffic. Hank was probably fine. Lena knew one thing she shared with her uncle was a tendency toward moodiness. Hank was probably just in a dark place. He’d probably be angry to find her on his doorstep, invading his space. She wouldn’t blame him.
    A white Cadillac Escalade was parked in the driveway behind Hank’s old Mercedes. Lena pulled her Celica close to the curb and turned off the ignition, wondering who was visiting. Hank might be hosting an AA meeting; in which case, she hoped the Escalade’s driver was the last to leave instead of the first to show up. Her uncle was just as hooked on self-help bullshit as he had been addicted to speed and alcohol. She had known Hank to drive six hours straight to hear a particular speaker, attend a particular meeting, only to turn around and drive another six hours back so that he could open the bar for the early afternoon drunks.
    She studied the house, thinking that the only thing that had changed about her childhood home was its state of decay. The roof was more bowed, the paint on the clapboard peeling so badly that a thin strip of white flecks made a chalk line around the house. Even the mailbox had seen better days. Someone had obviously taken a bat to the thing, but Hank, being his usual handy self, had duct-taped it back onto the rotting wood post.
    Lena palmed her keys as she got out of the car. Her hamstrings were tight from the long drive, and she bent at the waist to stretch out her legs.
    A gunshot cracked the air, and Lena bolted up, reaching for her gun, realizing that her Glock was in her glove compartment at the same time she processed that the gunshot was just the front door slamming shut.
    The slammer was a stocky, bald man with arms the size of cannons and an attitude she could read from twenty paces. A large sheath containing a hunting knife was on his right hip and a thick metal chain dangled from his belt loop to his wallet in his