Dark Paradise Read Online Free PDF Page A

plate in his head. The
    fine lines of the sight crossed her chest. His cheek rested against the
    stock of the Remington 700 rifle. Half a breath settled in his lungs.
    His heart rate slowed in conditioned response. His fingertip remained
    still against the trigger.
     
    There was no killing a ghost. He knew that better than anyone. He could
    only pray for it to leave and not come back to his mountain.
     
    If only there were a God to hear him . . .
     
     
     
    "Come on, come on, you big gear-jamming son of a bitch!   Oh! Oh!   OH!"
     
    Marilee focused an exasperated, exhausted glare at the wall beyond her
    rented bed. There was a starving-artist quality painting of a moose in a
    mountainscape hanging above the imitation mahogany Mediterranean-style
    head board. The painting bucked against the cheap, paper-thin wallboard
    in time with the heavy thumping going on in the adjacent room. The clock
    on the nightstand glowed 1:43 in pee-yellow digits. She had gotten the
    last room in the place.
     
    "Ride me, Luanne!   Eee-hah!   Ride me!   Ride me!   Christ all-fucking
    mighty!"
     
    The verbal commentary disintegrated into animal grunts and groans and
    panting that rose in pitch and volume to a vulgar crescendo. Blessed
    silence followed.
     
    Marilee cast a glance heavenward. "Please let them be dead."
     
    Heaving a sigh, she bent her head and pinched the bridge of her nose
    between a thumb and forefinger. She stood slumped back against the
    imitation mahogany dresser, half sitting, half leaning, still dressed in
    her wilted jeans and wrinkled T-shirt and vest. She couldn't bring
    herself to take her shoes off and walk barefoot on the grungy carpet,
    let alone undress and crawl between the sheets.
     
    She had turned off the single sixty-watt lamp on the nightstand, but the
    room was still bright enough for her to see every depressing detail. The
    relentless white glare of the mercury vapor light in the parking lot
    burned through the thin drapes that refused to meet in the middle of the
    window. Adding to the ambience was a dull red glow from the old neon
    sign that beckoned the roadweary to the Paradise Motel.
     
    There was nothing vaguely resembling paradise here. A ghost of a cynical
    smile twisted Marilee's lips at the thought that Luanne and Bob-Ray and
    his amazing gearshift of steel would probably say otherwise. It was all
    a matter of perspective, and Marilee's perspective was bleak. She looked
    around the room with its tacky appointments and ratty shag carpet, a
    fist tightening in her chest. She hadn't envisioned her first night in
    Montana being spent in a fuck-stop for truckers.
     
    There would have been humor in the situation if Lucy had been here to
    share the entertainment and the sixpack of Miller Lite Marilee had
    hauled with her all the way from Sacramento. But Lucy wasn't here.
     
    Marilee lifted a can to her lips and sipped, beyond caring that it was
    flat and warm. She had found half a pack of cigarettes in her glove
    compartment and had lit them all in a relentless chain that left her
    throat raw and her mouth tasting like shit. Her eyes burned from the
    smoke and from the tears she had been holding at bay all night.
     
    Her head throbbed from the pressure and from the effects of beer on an
    empty stomach.
     
    She had been too shocked to cry in front of J. D. Rafferty, which was
    just as well. She doubted he would have offered her anything in the way
    of sympathy. He didn't even have the decency to pretend he was sorry for
    Lucy's death.
     
    "Jeez," she muttered, shaking her head as she pushed away from the
    dresser to pace slowly along the foot of the bed. "Now I want a man to
    lie to me. There's a first.
     
    Bradford, where are you when I need you?"
     
    Back in Sacramento with the woman he had dumped her for, the jerk.
     
    After two years of "serious commitment," as he had labeled it, Bradford
    Enright had dropped her like a hot rock. He had already moved in with
    Ms. junior Partner