Evil Eternal Read Online Free PDF Page B

feeling the muscles of her jaw relax. Her leg jounced a little slower.
    Katie’s Gourmet Kitchen was filled to capacity with happy, talkative diners out for the brunch special on a cold Sunday afternoon. The hustle and bustle of New York City life was all around her, the lone girl at the window booth with no one to talk to. Because this was a café in the city, people didn’t give her a second look. Only the waitress, a middle-aged woman with dyed-blonde hair and legs that could only be the product of decades spent dashing between table and kitchen, seemed to notice that Aimee was the only one in the café dining alone.
    Aimee held up her BlackBerry for the tenth time in the past half hour to see if she had received any new e-mails. It gave her something to do, besides drinking mimosas. Her finger touched the Internet icon and she selected one of her favorites. Might as well do some shopping , she thought.
    She jumped at the sound of tapping on the window, dropping her Blackberry into an empty coffee cup.
    Her boyfriend, Shane Baxter, stood outside, an apologetic smile on his face. He held out his hands in supplication, going so far as to kneel on the dirty sidewalk. His mohawk, which normally stood at spiky attention, drooped to one side of his head. He was wearing an old army jacket with gaping holes in the side pockets. She wondered what dumpster he had pulled it from.
    As much as she wanted to be mad at him, to storm out and walk over him, maybe knee him in the back in the process, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. He was a master of puppy dog eyes and he looked so goddamn pathetic, silently begging for her forgiveness while dozens of people walked around him in complete oblivion.
    The corners of her mouth twitched in a suppressed smile and she motioned for him to come in. He jumped up and down several times, pumping his fists in the air, then danced, swiveling his hips and making one ridiculous face after another. By the time he had dashed to the front door, she was laughing.
    This is why she loved him.
    On the plus side, he was romantic, handsome in his own way, intelligent, artistic and funny as hell. On the downside, which is what everyone around her fixated on, he was impulsive, reckless, stubborn, penniless and, to top it all off, homeless. They had met a year ago when she was walking home from work and was accosted by three boys, all around seventeen, drunk on cheap beer and looking for trouble. Shane had come out of nowhere, wielding a metal garbage-can lid. He threw it at one kid and charged at the other two, howling like a madman. They ran like hell.
    He was her hero then, and more so now. Everything he did, he did of his own volition and she was sure there was a grand purpose to it all. He had left his home in upstate New York the day after he graduated high school. His father was an alcoholic and his mother abused him on a regular basis, sometimes putting her cigarettes out on his back when he was too young to get away or fight back. According to him, living on the streets of New York was a cakewalk compared to living in the house in Glens Falls.
    She just hoped that, as the weather got colder, he would get off the streets and move in with her rather than a shelter, where it was more dangerous than a prison without guards.
    “I am soooo sorry, baby,” he said, leaning over to kiss her cheek. “I was at the Y giving Mr. Peterson a painting lesson and I lost track of time.”
    “Which one is Mr. Peterson?”
    She didn’t even think to question him. Shane Baxter was many things, but a liar wasn’t one of them.
    “He’s the retired machine shop guy. His hands are gnarled as hell from arthritis, but he can still make some pretty nice strokes with a brush. I told him we could continue tomorrow.” Shane pulled her hands into his, which were covered by black, fingerless gloves. “So, how is the most beautiful girl in the world?”
    She squeezed his hands and he pulled them up to his lips to gently kiss