Castleview Read Online Free PDF Page B

drive.” He put his rifle flat on the rear seat, slammed the doors, raced the engine as he started it.
    Ann closed the other rear door and got in beside him. “I could have grabbed your gun,” she said. “I could’ve turned it around and shot you.”
    “I know,” he said. “But you’re not goin’ to do that.” He tapped the horn to get his mount off the road, and wrestled the shift lever in a way that showed he was accustomed to a stick.
    Ann clutched the armrest as the Buick rocked around a sharp curve. “What about your poor horse?”
    The rider chuckled. “Buck’ll be along. Wants to get back to the barn, get his saddle took off. You very wet, ma’am?”
    “Not as wet as you are,” Ann said.
    “I guess that’s right.” He was driving the gravel road much faster than she would have, but he obviously knew every twist and turn of it. “If they hadn’t of busted my jeep, I wouldn’t have had to take him out in this.”
    Ann said, “I’m sort of sorry I went out in it myself.”
    “That’s somethin’ I was wonderin’ about, ma’am. You come to see one of the kids?”
    Ann shook her head. “I just wanted to talk with whoever is in charge.”
    “In charge of the kids, or in charge of the place?”
    “I hadn’t thought about that,” Ann said. “In charge of the horses, I suppose.”
    “Then you got him. You want to go through our barn? Maybe you’d like a chance to dry off first. We got a big fire goin’.”
    “That sounds good,” she said. Actually, it sounded heavenly; she imagined a red-hot pot-bellied stove in a bunkhouse, cowboys spinning tall yarns (or was that sailors?), while a battered old stoneware coffeepot bubbled. Despite the heater, her teeth were chattering.
    Triumphantly, the Buick roared to the top of a small, steep hill; at the bottom, under a brilliant light on a tall pole, in a valley that seemed separate from the rest of the world, stood a big white barn and a red-roofed rambling fieldstone building.
    “This is a girl’s camp, isn’t it? I’d have thought you’d be closed by now.”
    He nodded without speaking as the Buick rattled over an old wooden bridge.
    When he had switched off the engine and returned her keys, he got his rifle from the back seat. “I guess you ought to open up that trunk, ma’am. Just to be sure.”
    Ann did, and he glanced inside. She closed it again and made certain it had latched. “Just what are you so frightened of, anyway?”
    “I don’t rightly know,” he told her. “Come on in.”
    She followed him into a wide rustic room, one wall of which was mostly fireplace; it held a bigger, redder, hotter fire than Ann could ever have imagined. Four young women were sitting on a long sofa dividing the room, not so much watching a television set as talking above the noise of it.
    The rider said, “We got company, Miss Lisa.”
    All four looked around and stood up.
     
    Wearily, Joy Beggs opened the front door of her own little house on Willow and hung her coat in the hall closet. Her son Todd called, “That you, Mom?”
    “Uh huh.”
    “You’ve got company.”
    “Who’s—” Joy began, as she came into the living room. She fell silent as her visitor rose.
    He was a very dark man with a thin, pointed, black beard and oddly penetrating eyes. There was something odd about his clothing, too, Joy decided—about the long brown tweed overcoat he drew tight despite the warmth of the room, and his pointed, shapeless shoes.
    “Per’aps I should introduce myself,” he suggested. “I am Liam Fee, and I am an archdeacon.” He extended a business card.
    Joy accepted the card. “I’m afraid Todd and I aren’t very religious, Mr. Fee, and I’m terribly tired. Maybe if you could come some other time, when it’s not quite so late … ?”
    “I will,” he told her. “Oh, indeed I will. I trust that you will have good news for me then.”
    Joy recalled having heard someplace that gospel meant “good news.” She repeated, “We’re not