Hard Road Read Online Free PDF Page B

Imagining a shadow looming up behind him, gun in its hand, I grated out, "Jeremy, don't be a big poop!"
     
     
That did it. He came the rest of the way in.
     
     
Holding hands, we half-slid down the slope to the level area. Light carried into the darkness farther below, and didn't diminish much as we went in, or maybe my eyes were adjusting to the dark as we moved. The slope had been clean but there was a lot of trash down here on the level, washed in by rain. The lower area was a jumbled mass of soggy stuff. Most of it was paper and plastic debris. Unfortunately, some of it looked like the dried corpses, furry lumps, or skeletons of dead birds and dead rodents.
     
     
I led Jeremy to a cement buttress that had a wide collar coming up about two feet from the floor. We could sit on the edge, and I needed a breather.
     
     
"What are we going to do, Aunt Cat?"
     
     
"We're going to have an adventure and then go home at the end of it. But I have to think for a minute, honey. Okay?"
     
     
"Okay."
     
     
It wasn't so easy to think. I knew my brother. I knew he wouldn't shoot at his own child. Or— I thought I knew him. But Jennifer had said that after being interviewed Barry was waiting in the management office, which suggested nobody had been keeping an eye on him. It was horrible enough to suspect he might have stabbed Plumly. Still, I had to face that possibility; I had seen Plumly before he struggled with Barry and he had looked okay, though upset. After the struggle, he was bloody.
     
     
Wait. The knife had looked like it had fallen from Plumly's own hand. Maybe he had stabbed himself.
     
     
Oh, sure! What wishful thinking that was. If he stabbed himself, why was somebody shooting at Jennifer and Jeremy and me? Plumly must have pulled the knife out of the wound at some point and it fell from his hand when he collapsed.
     
     
What a hideous thought— that Barry might have stabbed him! To me there is something much uglier about sticking a blade into another person, up close and personal, than shooting him, even though the effect on the victim may be exactly the same.
     
     
Why shoot me or Jeremy?
     
     
The killer had to believe we had seen something that was dangerous to him. Jeremy, me, and Jennifer.
     
     
Which led me right back to Barry. Hell.
     
     
And why Plumly? Really, the most important fact about a murder is who was murdered, isn't it? What had he done, or what had he found out?
     
     
Plumly. Why would anybody kill the security chief?
     
     
Suddenly, the light from the tunnel opening dimmed. A figure was standing in the mouth of the shaft, where the glow from the festival entered. Someone was looking into the tunnel.
     
     
He couldn't possibly see us. Please not. We were in darkness; he was in light. But I could see the outline of a person.
     
     
At that instant, he made me think of the Tin Woodman.
     
     
I whispered, with my hand cupped to his ear, "Jeremy, we have to be very quiet." I stood up. "Follow me quietly. Take my hand."
     
     
"I'm scared, Aunt Cat."
     
     
"Jeremy, do you remember in Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz , Dorothy had gone to California, and there was a big earthquake and Dorothy, and Jim the cab-horse, and the boy Jeb, all fell down a hole in the earth? And they had lots of adventures? And then finally they came to Oz."
     
     
"Of course I remember!"
     
     
"Well, this is a lot like that."
     
     
"Some of their adventures were scary, Aunt Cat. The Mangaboos, the vegetable people, were going to plant them. And they were chased by invisible bears."
     
     
That's a lot like this.
     
     
"We're going to have to be brave for a while. And resourceful, Jeremy, because I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."
     
     
     
    4
IF I ONLY HAD A BRAIN
Plumly. Why kill Plumly?
     
     
The last time I had seen Plumly before tonight was when I had dropped by the festival office in the Emerald City castle on Monday, three days ago. Actually, I had intentionally gone there,