In the Dark of the Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

Ellis shot back. “And I’ve got no problem going up on the roof, so just give me a hand with the ladder, okay?”
    A few minutes later, as Ellis tied one end of a nylon rope to himself and the other around the chimney, Adam took a bow saw and a pair of pruners and went to work on the clutter of dead branches that had fallen from the trees over the last seven years. He knew Ellis was right; he could use the money as much as Ellis, but he was still pissed off about having to work for a bunch of rich people whose kids would arrive in their L.L.Bean clothes with their Jet Skis and speedboats and spend the summer acting like they owned the whole town.
    And everybody in it.
    He picked up a bunch of branches and hurled them onto the growing pile of trash, his anger at the injustice of it growing steadily. None of those Chicago kids were going to be cleaning up stuff like this—their fathers would just peel off bills from the wads in their pockets and hand over the keys to the Range Rover or the Escalade, or whatever fake sport utility vehicle the rich people were driving this year.
    Adam dumped another load of brush onto the pile, and felt a stab of pain as a long sliver drove deep into the palm of his right hand. Cursing silently, he sat down on the patio and pulled his jackknife out of his pocket, pried the smaller of the two blades open, then realized it wasn’t going to work: he was right-handed and he wouldn’t be able to get the splinter out himself. “Chris!” he yelled.
    A moment later Chris McIvens appeared from behind the greenhouse, pushing a wheelbarrow full of broken glass. He dumped it onto an old tarp they’d found in the trailer and spread out next to the rubbish pile, then inspected Adam’s hand. “It’s gonna hurt,” he said as he took the knife from Adam. “You sure you want me to do it?”
    Adam nodded grimly. “I’m only doing this for the money, and I can’t do it with a freakin’ log in my hand, can I?”
    “Okay,” Chris said. “Here goes.” He poised the blade of the knife over Adam’s palm, then carefully sliced through the skin over the sliver as Adam gritted his teeth against the pain. A moment later Chris lifted the fragment of wood out of the open wound, and Adam instantly began sucking on the cut, which, now that the operation was over, didn’t really hurt all that much.
    “Lucky it wasn’t a nail,” Chris observed as he wiped the blade of the jackknife, then closed it and handed it back to Adam. “Coulda gotten lockjaw.”
    Adam rolled his eyes. “They got shots for that,
idiot.
” Then his eyes moved out past the house and down the lawn toward the lake. Shadows from the forest were creeping quickly across the lawn, the glassy water rippling where the fish were starting their evening feed. If it wasn’t for who was going to be living here, this could be a nice place. Then he heard Chris talking to him.
    “I was thinking we ought to do something out here.”
    “Yeah?” Adam asked. “Like what? Mow the lawn in a goddamned diamond pattern?”
    Now it was Chris who rolled his eyes. “No,
idiot,
” he said, giving the second word the exact enunciation Adam had used only a moment before. “I meant like we should set a booby-trap or something.”
    Adam eyed Chris with new respect. “Like what?” he said again.
    Chris shrugged. “I don’t know yet. There’s got to be something. And we’ve got a whole week to think about it.”
    The leaf blower suddenly roared to life above them, and a moment later a shower of filth rained down on their heads.
    Adam jumped up, shook the moss and dirt out of his hair, and looked up to the roof, but he couldn’t see Ellis, and knew Ellis wouldn’t hear him over the roar of the blower even if he yelled until he ruptured his larynx. His eyes met Chris’s. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s think of something. But we don’t tell Ellis, right?”
    Chris nodded, knowing as well as Adam that no matter how harmless whatever they came up with