In The Falling Light Read Online Free PDF Page A

the one in his side, was
pulsing. That was a bad one, and it would kill him if he didn’t get
medical help soon. He pressed a palm against it, feeling blood
sliding through his fingers.
    And then it got quiet, the pounding and
unholy screeching stopping suddenly. Silence except for Cesar’s
harsh breath.
    A moment later he heard the soft shushing
noise of rubberized hospital socks on a wooden floor. “What’s this?
What’s this?” Rosie’s dry voice floated through the trunk. The lid
moved, someone trying to lift it, and Cesar held it down with both
hands.
    “Lyle? Are you in there, dear?”
    He let go of the strap with a gasp of
relief, and the old woman slowly lifted it open. In the muted glare
of the flashlight she looked down at the shivering, bloody man
curled in the bottom of the trunk. “Oh, my!”
    “Rosie,” Cesar gasped, tears in his eyes,
“thank God you…”
    “Oh, my, he’s still alive.” Rosie shook her
head, as Pumpkin leaped into the trunk with a shrill little cry,
scissors raised. Cesar screamed and held up his hands as the old
woman let the lid drop back into place.
     
    She was slumped in her chair in a doze, the
morning sun beaming through lace curtains and warming the parlor.
She snored lightly, and drooled into her afghan. A sound brought
her around, and she lifted her head, focusing runny eyes on the
small figure before her, standing a few feet away beneath a coffee
table, hugging one of the legs. It had black bead eyes and a black
cone for a hat.
    “Hello, Pumpkin,” she said, smiling.
    The doll hid its face shyly behind the table
leg, then peeked out again.
    “I’ll have the agency send over another one
right away.”
    Pumpkin smiled with sharp little teeth.
    “Would you like a cookie, dear?”

 
     
     
     
BARRINGER ROAD
     
     
     
     
    Cheap carpet was making her nose itch,
rubbing a slow burn across the side of her face as the van bumped
and swayed. Zip ties at her ankles and wrists cut her skin, and the
duct tape across her mouth reeked of the man who put it there.
Cassie tried desperately to slow her racing heart as her mother’s
words came back to her.
    “Predators hunt the Silver River Mall.”
    She should have listened a long time
ago.
    Terrence Cobb tried to focus on the road,
but the twelve-year-old in back kept pulling his attention, the
excitement giving him dry mouth. The snatch had been easy, the girl
standing alone at the end of the sidewalk just down from the movie
theatre, far from security lights. She’d been so surprised that she
didn’t even have a chance to put up a fight. Terrence watched his
headlights sweep across the empty blacktop and endless trees,
checking his mirrors, seeing they were clear. Focus, he told
himself. He could relive it all later.
    Barringer Road was a body dump. Terrence had
used it three times before, but he wasn’t the only one. People
settling old scores, ending marriages with a shovel blade, even
others like him had been leaving their problems out here for years.
An eleven mile stretch of two lane asphalt tracing lazy curves
through deep woods, Barringer Road cut across from US 14 to County
Road 107 without a single inhabitant to disrupt the solitude.
Dozens of turn-outs, deserted camp sites and dead end logging roads
ensured the privacy Terrence craved, and its distance from
population made it impractical for the law to patrol with any
regularity.
    He had scouted his spot weeks earlier, an
overgrown pair of ruts that dead-ended a mile in at a cluster of
old stumps, long unused and out of screaming distance. Terrence had
placed a yellowing deer skull on the shoulder near the turn-off to
mark it. Now the headlights picked it out in the darkness ahead,
lifeless sockets staring into the night like a harbinger of what
was to come.
    Cassie felt the van slow and turn, now
lurching over a rougher surface, branches cracking under the tires.
She was sweating, and her dark hair hung across her face in wet
strands, her heart speeding.