Borderland Read Online Free PDF Page B

buddies. Vic hadn't blamed
her.
    Still,
all idiotic tendencies aside, Nolan Wulf was the man to call when you needed a
friend. And Vic needed one. There had been low points in his life before, but
for the last two years he'd been buffing floors with his ass in hell's
basement. He had broken the habit of telling himself things couldn't get much
worse. His life was living proof that they could.
    And
okay, he had made some stupid mistakes—the coke, especially—but in the account
books of karmic debt he thought he should be nearing the black any time now. He
hoped he was, anyway. There had been a few rays of light to give him such hope.
His father for instance. He and his dad had hardly been what anyone would call
close, but the old man had left the farm to him in his will. And the attorney's
call came the same day the bank announced foreclosure proceedings would begin
on his and Connie's house. If that wasn't the hand of fate, Vic didn't know
what was. The attorney mentioned that his father wanted him to sell the place and
take the money, was in fact adamant about it, but Vic couldn't see it. He
couldn't see anything but a way to escape.
    After
calling Nolan he quit his job as chief of security in a central shopping mall and
told the girls' babysitter he wouldn't need her anymore. Leaving the house
wasn't a problem; there were too many memories there to drag him down and fill
up his chest every time he woke up in bed alone or opened the wrong side of the
closet. Leaving the city was even less of a problem. He couldn't survive on
what the mall paid him, and unlike Nolan, his dismissal from the force carried
a stigma that told all prospective employers: Don't trust this guy.
    It was
terrible being branded, but it was his fault. Now his father had unwittingly
given him the means to start with a new slate. Nobody in Denke knew him. The
house was paid for, was his. The attorney even mentioned something about a car.
But most important, be wouldn't see Connie's face in every corner of every
room, he wouldn't hear her voice, smell her smell, or remember how thin and
pitiful she was in the last months of her life. Everything but a few personal
items he was saving for the girls had been sold to cover debts.
    Vic
wanted to remember only the good things about his life with Connie. Somehow,
far away from familiar streets and familiar faces, he knew there would be no
more bad dreams. No more falling apart in the middle of a sentence or during a
favorite song. No more aching, wondering, and worrying if he was doing right by
his girls and being an acceptable if not necessarily good father. He wanted to
be good. He wanted to make this farm thing work and rebuild their lives again.
He wanted—
    "Fuck,"
Nolan spat. "I think we're lost."
    Vic
frowned at him and inclined his head toward the back seat. "Watch the
language, pal."
    "Sorry,"
was the muttered reply. "Get the mother freakin’ map out and tell me where
the hell I am. I think I missed our turn back there."
    He did,
and they were forced to backtrack twelve miles until they found the right
county road. There weren't many of them to choose from; the isolation was in
fact overwhelming, but Vic assured him it was an honest mistake. Nolan blamed
it on Andy's gibberish about the big fat cloud in the sky that looked like an
old man walking a dog. He'd been looking for the dog, he explained.
    Vic
glanced at the sky and found it filled with white-topped, pewter-bellied
thunderheads. There was a lot of sky to see out here with no mountains, no
hills, and very few trees to obstruct the view. The prairie, he thought, and
for a moment he imagined a plodding band of horses and wagons trekking across
the flat expanse. Men, women, and children with dirty faces rocked against the
rumbling crawl of the wagons and flared their nostrils at the smell of sweating
horses and their own heated bodies. A small boy hung out of the back on one
wagon and stared with dark, dreaming eyes at the sky above.
    He
blinked