Patrick Griffin's Last Breakfast on Earth Read Online Free PDF Page A

much grown the family fortune, the old man’s inheritance had been managed well, and the eight-bedroom, timber-framed house still reeked of wealth.
    But if anybody thought it was going to be an easy job to rob the Coffin estate, the low-life scumbag had another think coming.
    Despite Hedgerow Heights’ nearly nonexistent crime rate, Ichabod had installed tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of silent alarms, motion detectors, panic buttons, and security cameras throughout the estate. And he’d taken other measures, too, including stockpiling self-defense items. In the coffee table right in front of him, for instance, was a Taser X3—the most advanced nonlethal self-defense item one could legally purchase over the Internet.
    He pulled open the drawer and removed the black-and-yellow, pistol-like device. Holding the weapon out with both hands like a TV-show policeman, he crab-stepped his way out into the narrow hallway.
    A faint but sickly sweet, smoky smell greeted his nose, and he could hear a low, regular rasping noise like somebody breathing, somebody with asthma. He quietly stalked to the end of the hallway and peered around the mahogany doorjamb. There on the floor next to the marble-topped counter, an animal was sprawled, apparently asleep, its furry gray-brown, puffy-tailed butt pointed right at him—there was a bear in his house!
    But the creature appeared to be asleep. He immediately thought to retrieve one of the six cans of bear spray he’d ordered after the Peekskill sighting a few months back. One was stashed by the seldom-used front door. But he probably shouldn’t be setting off bear spray inside a house and anyhow it wasn’t a very large bear—probably just a cub, not much bigger than a large dog—and certainly a good deal smaller than a full-grown criminal.
    He considered the weapon in his hand, leveled his arm, and placed the red laser-sight dot right in the middle of the animal’s fluffy rump. There was a terrific pop! and a series of clicks, and the next thing he knew the animal was flopping on the floor, its claws clacking noisily on the polished hardwood.
    It was a disturbing sight, not that he spent much time watching. He dropped the still-discharging weapon and ran—or at least tottered—back down the hall as fast as his knob-kneed old legs would take him.
    He didn’t get very far. As he crossed the dining room he was nearly dropped to his knees by a terrifying pain in his chest. He gasped and placed his right hand on his left breast. An image of a trout flopping in the bottom of a rowboat came to him and he did his best not to panic. He needed to stay calm. He needed to think rationally. He needed to slow his pulse and be clearheaded. And especially he needed to avoid having a heart attack while there was a bear in his kitchen.
    Putting his free hand on the back of the nearest chair, he dropped his head and concentrated on his breathing. Just breathing, like he did for his weekly calisthenics: In. Hold. Out. Hold. In. Hold. Out.
    The tingling in his arms, and the ringing in his ears, began to fade. He raised his head and listened. No sounds were coming from the kitchen. Maybe he’d killed the animal or—better yet—maybe it had fled back outside the way it had come in? Had it entered through an open window? Had Consuela left the back door unlatched?
    â€œA bear,” he whispered to himself. “A bear in my kitchen!”
    And a strangely colored one at that. It had to have been a black—there were no grizzlies east of the Rockies, thank God. But this one had been grayish brown in color. Perhaps sometimes black bears weren’t entirely dark, or maybe their young sometimes were lighter colored.
    But it had definitely been a bear. Its legs had been thicker than a dog’s, and most dogs didn’t have puffy tails. But … did bears have puffy tails?
    He drew a deep breath, held it, let it out, and tried letting