Paradise County Read Online Free PDF Page A

that provided privacy for those entering the rest room blocked her escape.
    “Eric!” She stopped in her tracks, calling, he presumed, to her incapacitated boyfriend. Then she whirled, her hair swirling around her like a cape, tugging frantically at the handle of the ladies’ room as if she thought to escape him by running back inside.
    “Silly,” he said almost fondly, and grabbed her arm, jabbing the taser into her side.

Three

    I t was cold, far colder than she would have expected Kentucky to be in November. She always thought of sunshine and horses and acre upon acre of lush green grass when she thought of Kentucky—but then, she’d only ever been to Whistledown Farm in the summer, and hadn’t been there at all for seven years.
    Now tragedy had brought her back.
    Alexandra Haywood shivered as she stepped out of the big white Mercedes that was one of several vehicles kept garaged on a year-round basis at the farm. Her hip-length, charcoal gray wool jacket had a black Persian lamb collar and cuffs and was belted at the waist. Zipped to the throat and worn with a black cashmere turtleneck, formfitting black leather pants and high-heeled black ankle boots, it should have been enough to keep her warm—but it wasn’t. She was freezing, forced to clench her teeth to keep them from chattering. Since the funeral she had lost weight, maybe as much as ten pounds from her five-foot-seven-inch frame, so that now she verged on skinny rather than slender. Her beauty had dwindled too, dimmed like a lamp with the wattage turned down. Her skin had lost color until it was almost milk white, paler even than the expensive platinum blond of her straight, shoulder-blade-length hair,pulled back now into a sleek chignon at her nape. Her fine features had become pointier, pinched-looking almost, and the dark blue of her eyes was repeated in the shadows beneath them. She tried to hide the worst of the ravages grief had wrought, painting her lips Chanel red and patting concealer beneath her eyes, but the fact remained that she looked like a ghost of her former self. And felt like one, too.
    It was a gray morning, with overcast skies threatening icy drizzle later in the day. The ramshackle barn on the muddy rise in front of her and the circular, covered-train-track-looking building behind it had weathered to a color that was almost as much graphite as black. The iced-over grass in the surrounding fields, the small pond to the right, the leafless clump of trees stretching skyward like gnarled hands to the left, even the narrow asphalt driveway on which she stood, were all varying shades of gray.
    Her whole life had turned gray, she thought, and the thought brought with it a great burst of sorrow like blood gushing from an open wound. Alex winced, bracing herself as she had learned to do until the rush of pain subsided. A movement in the partially open door of the barn drew her eyes and attention, and, thankfully, she felt the acute stab of grief start to fade away.
    A scalped-looking teenage boy in a navy Polartec pullover stood staring at her, hands thrust deep into the pockets of his baggy jeans, apparently drawn by the sound of her arriving car. Methodically, on autopilot as she had been since the funeral, Alex closed and locked the car door. It was too hard to remember that she was in Simpsonville, Kentucky, rather than Philadelphia and didn’t have to lock anything at all. Facts like that kept slipping away from her; she just couldn’t seem to concentrate. Meanwhile, the boy turned and disappeared back into the barn’s interior, yelling “Dad!” at a volume that made her wince.
    Maybe that was a good thing, though. Maybe her hearing at least was beginning to return to normal.
    Since the funeral, she had tended to experience her sounds, like her colors, as muted. This dulling of her senses was, she thought, nature’s anesthetic. It was meant to help her cope with crippling pain.
    Her father was dead, a suicide. That’s what they