Seldom Seen in August Read Online Free PDF

flashing. The trio of cops standing around them was the only
sign of life on an uncannily empty street. If the sight of police
hadn’t lured the curious out of their homes, then it was quite
possible that nobody lived in them after all. It put him in mind of
the fake homes filled with mannequins the military set up in the
desert as targets for nuclear testing.
    His head hurt. Things had gotten way
more complicated than they should have been. Rob the bank, nobody
gets hurt, split up and meet later to divvy up the score. That was
it. A simple plan. Instead, people had died, victims of
Cartwright’s itchy trigger finger, Wade was stuck in some kind of
sick-joke carnival funhouse designed from blueprints straight out
of his head, and now Cartwright was in custody and telling the
cops…
    Still looking out onto the street, he
frowned.
    Just what did Cartwright have to
tell them? That he hadn’t robbed the bank by himself? There were
ample witnesses who’d testify to that, and if not, there were the
security cameras. There wasn’t much else he could give the pigs
that they could use. Cartwright didn’t know him well enough. He
wouldn’t, for instance, be able to tell them where he was likely to
hide, or whom he might seek sanctuary from. In fact, Cartwright
didn’t know jack. So, assuming Wade had properly understood the
text message, what exactly had he “TALKED” about? Who exactly had
he “TALKED” to?
    Then it clicked.
    Not the cops, but the instigator of
this little ghost house tour that had been set up in his honor.
Whoever the Wizard behind the curtain was, he would need to know
everything about Wade to be able to pull this off and had, it
seemed, enlisted Cartwright’s help in constructing the charade.
Which in turn explained why the only “ghosts” Wade had seen had
been ones he had managed to forget over the years. The minor
transgressions. The puppet master of the house hadn’t had access to
his deeper, darker secrets or the show might have been an
altogether more gruesome one.
    He smiled. Figured you out, you
fuck .
    Glass shattered in the
kitchen.
    “Wade Crawford,” one of the cops
called. “This is the police.”
    You don’t say , Wade thought and
crossed the room, shoving his back up against the wall beside the
kitchen door.
    His phone hummed.
    Christ, now what?
    “Wade, we’d like to do this quietly if
at all possible. We don’t want anyone to get hurt, and that
includes you. We just want to talk.”
    Wade hadn’t fired a shot since he’d
arrived at the house, out of fear that it would alert the cops to
his position, but that was hardly a concern now. Fortunately, it
meant he had a full clip now together with the extra one in his
jeans pocket. He could hold them off for a little while, at least
until a better option presented itself.
    He took out his phone, slid his back
down the wall until he was sitting, and peeked around the corner.
There was nobody creeping up on him, but it wouldn’t be too long
before they would, right before the SWAT team arrived to teargas
his ass. He checked the phone. Another message from Cartwright, and
just as cryptic as before:
     
    BSMENT
     
    He studied the message for a brief
moment before pocketing the phone. He didn’t know if there was a
basement in the house or not, and didn’t much care. Basements were
not traditionally famed for being good escape routes unless they
had a series of intricate tunnels leading elsewhere. They were
traps. And even if he’d chosen to overlook that glaring fact, he
wasn’t about to take advice from Cartwright now that he knew he was
in on the whole thing.
    So no, to hell with the
basement.
    An attic on the other hand…
    It would still be trapping himself, but
better the high ground than the low, and it would be difficult for
anyone to get at him without getting a bullet to the
head.
    He almost laughed at the image of
himself, knees drawn up, shooting a succession of cops one after
the other as they poked their heads up