DARK THRILLERS-A Box Set of Suspense Novels Read Online Free PDF Page A

If he hadn't said anything, they wouldn't have thought of it and maybe we would have been stopped somewhere on the interstate system. Now we were going down through thick forests to a curvy little two-lane highway, Heddy driving too fast.
    That made Crow happy. He chewed his gum with his mouth open--really bad manners--and kept looking out the window, grinning.
    Daddy just sat like a stone in the front seat, quiet and cold, moving nothing but his eyes. Mama held my hand and squeezed it so tight my bones mashed together. We all knew it was going to be a long trip. Maybe even into the night.
    #

    "HELL, Crow, they've got a CD player in this thing. Can you feature it?"
    Crow scooted up to look over the seat then sat back again. "Play something."
    Heddy looked over at Jay. "Where's your CDs?"
    "We don't have any. We just got the car last week."
    "God damn it. That's what I was afraid of. You could have bought some Doors stuff or the Eagles or something. Shit."
    "Just turn on the radio, Baby." Crow slipped his hand into the leather bag he kept on his lap and took out a foil packet. He unfolded it carefully and jiggled around the little dirty looking crystals there. Then he pulled out a straw cut in half and snorted the crystals up one nostril and then the other. He felt the little girl watching him. Her gaze made his neck prickle.
    "You want a hit, kid?" He held out the foil packet toward her and laughed. She withdrew toward her mother like an octopus pulling in its tentacles.
    Carrie said, "Leave her alone."
    "Leave her alone,” Crow mimicked. "Leave my baby alone. Like that kid ain't seen this shit in the schoolyard. Don’t get on that high and mighty horse with me."
    “ Just leave her alone.”
    He stared at her hard until she turned to the window.
    Heddy kept scanning radio stations. Light and dark whipped across the interior of the car as they drove down curving roads bounded on both sides with tall green trees. They weren't pines, that's all he knew. The trunks were thick and scaly as the backs of fabled dragons and the canopies were lush with blankets of leaves in mint, emerald, and forest green.
    Crow closed his eyes on the blinking light floating over him and let the rush come. It slipped up his diaphragm into his chest until his heart was stomping like a flamenco dancer.
    Best thing about Leavenworth was the drugs. You could get anything and everything if you had something of value to exchange. Hell, you could get champagne and caviar if you could pay to get it inside. He wouldn't tell Heddy his big bargaining power rode below his belt. She'd call him a queer, but that's because she didn't know what it was like inside. There were a few real queers, sure, but most of them were like Crow--selling all they had to sell and that was the flesh. In other worlds you lived other lives. Behind the walls, you grabbed your balls. No shit, Sherlock.
    When he first got put in Leavenworth, a big nigger, black as midnight and wild as a train off its tracks, came to him and said, “You toss my salad, I’ll protect you from the others.” Tossing a salad didn’t sound too bad to him, but that was before he knew it meant getting down and licking out the guy’s asshole until he got off his rocks. The Mod Squad, what the big nigger called himself, stuffed it with strawberry jelly from the breakfast tray and told Crow to lick till he saw stars. So Crow spread the cheeks, shut his eyes and licked for all he was worth. What was he going to do, kill the motherfucker, him weighing two-forty and Crow barely busting scale at one-thirty?
    If Heddy knew he’d sucked ass, she’d never kiss him again. Hell, he wasn’t sure he’d blame her either. But that’s how he survived prison life, tossing salads, eating bungholes, staying alive, man, drawing breath the best way he knew how.
    Four years. Four interminably long years punctuated by night sweats and the horror of the endless routine of the days.
    He had tried stuff in prison he wouldn't