Heart-shaped box Read Online Free PDF

the company of another human, someone awake and sensible and with a head full of everyday nonsense, was irresistible.
    Danny was on the phone, craned back in his office chair, laughing about something. He was still in his suede jacket. Jude didn’t need to ask why. He himself had a robe over his shoulders and was hugging himself under it. The office was filled with a damp cold.
    Danny saw Jude looking around the door and winked at him, another favorite ass-kissing Hollywood habit of his, although on this particular morning Jude didn’t mind it. Then Danny saw something on Jude’s face and frowned. He mouthed the words You okay? Jude didn’t answer. Jude didn’t know.
    Danny got rid of whoever he was talking to, then rotated in his chair to turn a solicitous look upon him. “What’s going on, Chief? You look like fucking hell.”
    Jude said, “The ghost came.”
    “Oh, did it?” Danny asked, brightening. Then he hugged himself, mock-shivered. Tipped his head toward the phone. “That was the heating people. This place is a fucking tomb. They’ll have a guy out here to check on the boiler in a little while.”
    “I want to call her.”
    “Who?”
    “The woman who sold us the ghost.”
    Danny lowered one of his eyebrows and raised the other, making a face that said he had lost Jude somewhere. “What do you mean, the ghost came?”
    “What we ordered. It came. I want to call her. I want to find some things out.”
    Danny seemed to need a moment to process this. He swiveled partway back to his computer and got the phone, but his gaze remained fixed on Jude. He said, “You sure you’re all right?”
    “No,” he said. “I’m going to see to the dogs. Find her number, will you?”
    He went outside in his bathrobe and his underwear, to set Bon and Angus loose from their pens. The temperature was in the low fifties, and the air was white with a fine-grained mist. Still, it was more comfortable than the damp, clinging cold of the house. Angus licked at his hand, his tongue rough and hot and so real that for a moment Jude felt an almost painful throb of gratitude. He was glad to be among the dogs, with theirstink of wet fur and their eagerness for play. They ran past him, chasing each other, then ran back, Angus snapping at Bon’s tail.
    His own father had treated the family dogs better than he ever treated Jude, or Jude’s mother. In time it had rubbed off on Jude, and he’d learned to treat dogs better than himself as well. He had spent most of his childhood sharing his bed with dogs, sleeping with one on either side of him and sometimes a third at his feet, had been inseparable from his father’s unwashed, primitive, tick-infested pack. Nothing reminded him of who he was, and where he had come from, faster than the rank smell of dog, and by the time he reentered the house, he felt steadier, more himself.
    As he stepped through the office door, Danny was saying into the phone, “Thanks so much. Can you hold a moment for Mr. Coyne?” He pressed a button, held out the receiver. “Name’s Jessica Price. Down in Florida.”
    As Jude took the receiver, he realized that this was the first time he’d ever heard the woman’s full name. When he had put down his money on the ghost, he’d simply not been curious, although it seemed to him now that it was the kind of thing he should’ve made a point to know.
    He frowned. She had a perfectly ordinary sort of name, but for some reason it caught his attention. He didn’t think he had ever heard it before, but it was so inherently forgettable it was hard to be sure.
    Jude put the receiver to his ear and nodded. Danny pressed the button again to take it off hold.
    “Jessica. Hello. Judas Coyne.”
    “How’d you like your suit, Mr. Coyne?” she asked. Her voice carried a delicate southern lilt, and her tone was easy and pleasant…and something else. There was a hint in it, a sweet, teasing hint of something like mockery.
    “What did he look like?” Judas asked.