Dead Last Read Online Free PDF Page B

seconds, four. The cowboy says something you can’t hear. Then she slams the door. The look on her face has changed. She’s not sexy anymore. She’s not drunk. Her mouth is open, eyes large.
    The truck starts. It has loud exhausts, a throaty rumble. He backs out of the space, and you turn your head to see her again, staring at you, at the black shape in the front seat of a car, her eyes squinting through the dark.
    The two lovers head off into the night. She doesn’t know what she saw. But whatever it was, it scared her.
    You have infected her evening. She won’t be able to get you out of her mind. If she tells the cowboy what she thinks she saw, he’ll have a good laugh. He’ll call her loony, a drunk. He’ll screw her anyway, but it won’t be as pleasurable as it might have been. You’ve invaded her imagination and she won’t be able to get rid of you.
    You take the weapon out of the suitcase, strip away the packaging. Some minor assembly is required, no tools necessary. You tear the cash receipt into pieces and ball up the brown paper sack. You get out and throw the trash in the Dumpster. You know, of course, this act is sloppy and could lead to your undoing, but you do it anyway.
    The parking lot is quiet. No one around, just the thump of the jukebox inside the cowboy bar. As a precaution you decide to relocate your car. You don’t think a cop would take the woman’s story seriously and send a prowl car to the bar. She’s drunk. But you play it safe.
    It is one thing to be discovered, quite another to be caught.
    You get back in, drive a mile east, and park near a school you noted earlier. The white rental car is a common make. It has Texas plates. It blends into the neighborhood.
    You open the car door, step out. You absorb the darkness, and the darkness absorbs you. You can feel the warm night air brush across the suit. You are naked but you are not naked.
    You listen to the crickets and the call of a distant owl. You reach into the car and take out your weapon. You carry it like a warrior marching into battle. Through the darkness you walk the short distance to your victim’s house. No traffic passes. Most houses along the way are dark. A few have a single light burning inside in this early-to-bed town.
    When you reach the house, you find it dark as well. You are energized. Naked in the night. But also concealed. An unseen spirit gliding through the summer air, hearing only distant cars, the yowl of a tomcat jousting with a rival, the hum of the power lines, crickets answering crickets. Bats flicker through a streetlight.
    You are alive with the fever of the moment.
    You circle the house. You are looking for signs of other occupants. Potential trouble. There is only one car in the driveway, an old Volvo. The yard is unkept, grass long, bushes overgrown. No yard furniture. A light glows in a single window. You hear no noise from inside. You return to the front.
    You mount the steps, slip inside the small screened porch.
    You were planning on ringing the doorbell or knocking. To wake the woman, draw her to the door groggy from sleep, then barge through and do your quick work. But as astonishing as it seems, the door is unlocked. A lazy backwater way of life is still flourishing—at least for one last night. Tomorrow this town will know fear. Locksmiths will be busy.
    You step into the stuffy darkness of the foyer. The scent of fried food is in the air. Cigarette smoke, booze. You have formed no image of the woman you’ve come to kill, but these odors make you picture her as fat, wearing curlers. You see her feasting on Doritos and rum and Coke while chain-smoking and watching a late-night talk show.
    You dissolve that image. It interferes with your clarity of purpose. It confuses the issue. You do not care about these people. You don’t build a case for them or against them. You don’t interact or engage. Keep contact to a minimum. Kill and leave. These people are pawns. They are nothing.
    You locate