Retribution Read Online Free PDF

through her veins. Had fate followed her after all?

3
    Roger sat stiffly on the front porch swing at the McIverson Bed and Breakfast and stared straight ahead, acutely aware of Bill, Trina’s dad, who sat beside him. When he had arrived an hour ago, a neighbor had occupied one of the two wicker chairs across from the swing. He had thought about changing spaces when the neighbor left, but, for now, he remained in place.
    As the sun fell behind the sheltering limbs, the air cooled, but not enough to warrant a jacket. The ceiling fan wobbled as it rotated, and the moving air passed over him in soft waves, just enough to keep persistent fall gnats from becoming a nuisance. Two years in the south, and he still couldn’t get used to the warmer weather.
    Bill towered over him by at least a foot, but then, Bill towered over almost everyone. It wasn’t the man’s height or bulk that made him cautious: the big man seemed to know more than he should.
    Lillian could arrive any time now, and Roger’s nerves were raw from being constrained within his forced good behavior. Hiding his tension from Bill ate at his energy. Roger hated Lillian. Although nothing would undo the past, some things, when the law proved to be inadequate, demanded a personal touch. Soon he could restart his life. Darlington, and even his partner, would become nightmares of the past, dreams he would never revisit.
    Sitting on the edge of the second wicker chair, Ted puckered his brow and clenched his lips as he watched the approaching cars.
    A little girl, perhaps three years old, stumbled on the uneven sidewalk. A man, presumably her father, grabbed her and picked her up. She wrapped slender arms around the man’s neck and rested her head on his shoulder.
    An ache tightened Roger’s throat and he turned away from the scene of trust.
    The rhythmic squeak of the porch swing, and its lulling, rocking motion, usually soothed him, but today it did little to loosen the balled muscles in his neck. Tilting his chin upward and rotating his head, he felt the ache, like a flame being held against a rope. He ran his hand down the short beard he had grown to cover what he considered his greatest physical flaw, a weak chin.
    The sidewalk stood empty now, but in the yard, a pair of squirrels scampered up the old oak, their cheeks bulging with acorns. A siren sounded and his heart thumped wildly, even though the wailing remained muffled by dense air and distance.
    He was too reactive and needed some activity to burn off the adrenalin that laced his blood, but a walk, which usually helped calm him, was out of the question. He might miss her arrival. A piece of loose skin dangled beside his right thumbnail and he pulled it off. Blood oozed out and he stared, watching it grow to a small bubble before he wiped it off with his other hand.
    He rose from the swing and went upstairs to the bathroom to wash his hands. Back on the swing, he turned to Bill. “Did you make it to the festival?”
    Bill’s size fourteen shoes maintained a steady rhythm as he pushed the porch swing back and forth. “I walked up for awhile,” he mumbled, brushing his hand across the top of his head, the short salt-and-pepper stubble barely disturbed by the action. “Seemed wrong not to, but there wasn’t much that interested me.”
    “You made quick work of those sweet potato fries,” Ted said, his gaze darting from his father-in-law and back to the street.
    Bill knew things about people, what they were feeling, if they were good or evil. Kind of like Santa Claus. More than once in the past hour, Roger had turned to find Bill staring at him. Did he suspect?
    The minutes suspended, mocking, refusing to move on.
    “So, Bill, anything new between you and Sandra that I should know about?” he asked.
    The steady rocking stuttered. “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “You and Sandra. You’re a couple, aren’t you?”
    “I don’t know where you got that idea.”
    Bill and Sandra were always