Revenant Rising Read Online Free PDF Page B

tricycles and snow sleds to go helling around in places they’ve got no business.”
    “Then there’s a road leading to this old railroad track?”
    “Not a regular road. Just the beat-down path the hellions wore, but it can handle a four-wheel drive. My rig’s down there now and that’ll be the best way to get your friends out. Not very far, not too steep. I’ll have that look around, now, if you don’t mind.”
    Bill examines the broken tree before he looks at the wreckage, then emits a low whistle when he looks into the passenger side.
    “Mrs. Elliot’s a goner, that’s for sure. But Mr. Elliot over there looks as stable as he’s gonna be in this situation. You did right by not tryin’ to pry him out. Coulda hurt him worse.”
    “Wait! I never said who they are. What makes you think you know?” Nate says.
    “Oh, everybody knows. You and him’ve been big news ever since you crossed the Mackinac Bridge this afternoon, and then there was that there ruckus outside Bimmerman. You and him are all anyone’s talkin’ about.” Bill shows a semi-toothless grin, ghoulish in the trouble lights he’s setting up.
    “But no one paid the slightest bit of extra attention anywhere we stopped today,” Nate says.
    “Prob’ly not . . . not our way. I’m not speakin’ for all, but in these parts most of us know who famous folk are and we just don’t carry on about it in a public way.” He indicates where Nate should fasten ropes to the half-felled tree.
    “What about Mrs. Elliot?” Nate says. “She was from these parts . . . Didn’t her recent reappearance cause any—”
    “Cause a stir? Audrey—she was known here as Audrey—and I’d call her infamous more’n famous,” Bill says and steps forward to give Nate a boost onto the foreshortened hood of the pickup.
    “I won’t argue that.”
    “Y’know, there’s one or two that still believe your friend there was her ruination, but the higher-thinkin’ folks know she was already a lost cause when she left here. Too bad your friend didn’t share that thought.”
    “Yes, definitely too bad.”
    “Don’t know how he managed to put up with her shenanigans for so long.”
    “Colin Elliot has an amazing capacity for love and he never gives up on anybody, least of all himself.” Nate recites as though from a prepared statement and recognizes the recitation as the probable key remark he’ll make to the media. With a change of tense it could also do nicely as the main theme of a eulogy. He shivers in the heavy coat when Bill indicates the stringing of lines is finished and he can climb down.
    “You were askin’ if Audrey’s return here brought out any marching bands and the answer’s no,” Bill says. “She was more in a position to be scorned than worshiped, and anyone havin’ any doings with her was from the bad element, if you know what I mean.”
    “Uh . . . Do you know if she was pregnant when she got here?” Nate says after they circle back to Aurora’s side of the wreckage.
    “Can’t say as I do, but she coulda been cuz her belly’s still swole some.” Bill probes it with a gloved finger, the same one he uses to examine the metal shards protruding into the passenger compartment and the gore atop her torso. When he finishes these investigations he says nothing at first, just covers the hideous sight with one of the blankets.
    “Wouldn’t do for the mister to come to and find that staring him in the face . . . well, not staring.” Bill gives another one of his mirthless one-syllable laughs and Nate reminds himself the guy is not a medical examiner, he’s only an Army medic from a long-ago army.
    “Too bad about her head,” Bill says as he repositions a couple of the lights. “She was always so purty on the outside. Did you find the head yet? Sometimes they’re shot quite a ways from the scene when they come off like that, so clean and quick. If it’s any consoling, she didn’t feel nothin’.” And don’t worry yourself about