Bloodlines Read Online Free PDF Page B

that bright. Took after their late mother in the brains department.
    Mitch heard the baby cry, but Estelle rushed in to take care of him, and soon he quieted. Mitch wondered if the boy would be smart. Couldn't really tell yet, of course. If he was, Mitch would teach him to run Yeager Enterprises. Wouldn't that be something? Yes, that would be perfect.
    He moved to his desk and picked up a small, framed photograph--a black-and-white image of Mitch and his brother. Adam, about twenty, his arm around Mitch's skinny shoulders. Mitch was fifteen or so. Adam smiling, his eyes full of mischief.
    He missed him every day. Every single day.
    **CHAPTER 6
    VIEWED FROM THE BACK, THE MAN WHO HAD SPENT THE LAST FEW HOURS keeping a vigil in the hospital room might have been mistaken for a boxer. He was an athletic man in his late twenties: his sturdiness could not be hidden beneath his suit, nor his height disguised by the odd way in which he leaned against the window, both large hands against the glass, one splayed open, the other clenched in a fist; his forehead was bent against the same cold, smooth surface. It was raining, but he seemed unaware of the drops colliding against the other side of the pane, or of his own reflection, the reflection of a man revisiting some too familiar misery.
    His hands, their knuckles crosshatched with scars, might have fooled the unobservant into thinking that he made his way in the world with his fists. But a closer look at the right hand, the open one, would reveal black ink stains marring otherwise clean, long fingers.
    "O'Connor?"
    It was no more than a puzzled whisper, but the younger man's reverie was instantly broken, and he moved to the bedside of the man who had called his name.
    "I'm here, Corrigan," he said quickly.
    "Should have known," Corrigan murmured, turning his right eye--the one that wasn't bandaged--toward his visitor. Speaking slowly through stitched and swollen lips, he said, "Can't the devil wait 'til I'm dead before he sends his minions?"
    "It's worse than that, Jack Corrigan. The bastard made me come here alone, on account of him and the boys below being too busy laying in fuel for the times to come. Claims they've never had to build a fire as hot as the one they'll need for the likes of you."
    "I say we make him wait. I'm going to nobody's cold hell."
    "Agreed," O'Connor said. He watched as Corrigan tried to take stock of his surroundings. "You're in St. Mary's."
    "What time is it?"
    "Nine o'clock. Sunday night."
    "Sunday night..." Corrigan repeated, bewildered.
    "You've needed the rest. And need more. Don't worry, just sleep. I'll be here."
    Corrigan seemed unable to resist the suggestion, and began to fall asleep again, but then as if suddenly recalling something troubling, he looked up at O'Connor and said, "The car..."
    O'Connor frowned. Jack hadn't driven a car in more than twenty years-- not since the accident that had permanently injured his ankle and caused so many other troubles. O'Connor decided that Corrigan was still in a fog, confused as any man might be after so severe a beating. "Don't let that trouble you now, Jack," he said. "Everything's going to be fine."
    Corrigan seemed unsure of this, but lost his struggle to stay awake.
    O'Connor felt a sensation of relief run through him from his shoulders to his shoes, and he now looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. Up to that moment, he had been aware only of his battered and bandaged friend, of his own helplessness and anger, of long-ago memories of the only other time he had seen Jack in a hospital bed. But now Corrigan had awakened and spoken and even joked a bit. There was still plenty to worry over, but O'Connor relaxed enough to acknowledge to himself that he was tired.
    O'Connor got the call at five this morning, not long after Jack had been found at the edge of a marsh, soaked to the skin in brackish water. Someone at the hospital had found O'Connor's business card and phone number in