Carved in Darkness Read Online Free PDF

and asking him to help her track down Michael’s records was more important than getting yelled at over her lack of follow-through. She briefly considered ignoring the call, but only for a moment.
    Ignoring Richards would only make things worse. If she got fired, she’d have zero resources in tracking Michael down. Her best bet was to go see Richards and throw herself on her sword, make excuses he would know were bullshit, but he might accept them if they sounded plausible enough. Hopefully she’d be able to get out of his office without a suspension around her neck. After that she’d find Nickels and ask for his help in figuring out what Michael O’Shea wanted from her after all these years.

SIX
    M ICHAEL TOSSED THE BINOCULARS on the bed and started to pace the length of his rented room. He’d watched her get ready for work, strap on her guns, and rush out the door, intent—he was sure—on finding him. He wasn’t worried though. Finding him would be impossible. Even for her.
    Shooting a glance at the unopened bottle of Glenfiddich on the dresser, he felt a twinge, wanting nothing more than to drown himself in it. He’d been carrying the same bottle with him for over a year now. He hadn’t drunk a single drop. Not since the day Lucy told him the truth about her granddaughter.
    He’d come home the moment he gotten the call from his Aunt Gina— Mikey, you’ve got to come home. Frankie’s missing —just dropped his life and hopped on a plane. After nearly three weeks of round-the-clock search parties and sleepless nights waiting for the phone to ring, they found her. She was in the woods along a stretch of Route 80, propped against a tree not more than ten yards from the road. It was a spot they’d searched a dozen times.
    After that, he’d stayed drunk for days. Every morning he woke with a black hole in the center of his chest growing bigger by the second, an eight-man demolition crew inside his head seemingly intent on tearing his shit down from the inside out, and a liver that begged for mercy. He’d reach for the bottle and start drinking.
    Days stretched into a week before the call came from the coroner, telling him Frankie’s body would be released for burial. He muttered a thank you and snapped his cell in half. Frankie was all he’d had left, and she was gone. Her funeral was the next day, and he was seriously considering eating a bullet afterward. Until then he planned to keep drinking.
    The banging grew louder and louder, until he was sure one of those hammer jockeys inside his head busted through his skull. No, wait. Someone was at the door. He didn’t even bother to peel his face off the mattress. “No housekeeping,” he shouted but the sound was muffled by the mouthful of sheets he was chewing on. He turned his face to the side. “ Go away .” The external banging stopped. The internal hammering picked up the pace—his punishment for yelling so close to his own ears. Swiping the near-empty bottle off the nightstand, he finished it off. He managed to roll himself over to eyeball its replacement on the dresser.
    The banging started up again, louder than before, like someone was going at the door with a sledgehammer. “What the fuck … ” Somehow, he found his feet and lurched his way across the room and wrestled the door open. He hadn’t seen the sun in days, and it greeted him with a stiletto to his eyeballs. Shit. Squinting, he raised a hand to block another attack. “Look, you can take your clean towels and shove ’em up—”
    He opened his eyes just wide enough to see Lucy Walker standing on the thin stretch of sidewalk outside his no-tell-motel room door. She looked pissed, and she was holding a tire iron like she was Babe Ruth swinging for the fences. Confused, he looked past her for dancing bears or polka-dotted elephants, maybe a fish riding a bicycle, because this had to be some sort of psychotic break. “Are you real?” he said but didn’t expect an answer. Chances were