SUSPENSE THRILLERS-A Boxed Set Read Online Free PDF Page A

have it.”
    “Now Nick, I’m not screwing around with you. I want you to hand that thing over. I’ll take care of it,” Daley promised.
    “What about the demons? They..."
    “You can’t kill them with a wire, can you?” Daley interrupted. “Well, can you ?” He heard himself shouting and flinched.
    Nick lowered his head. Daley looked at the blond, matted hair and remembered the droplets of blood shining in the light of the cigarette lighter. “Give it to me,” he repeated.
    Nick undid two buttons and slowly reached inside his shirt. He brought out the garrote and held it before his eyes, mesmerized by its gentle rhythmic swinging.
    Daley took the wire from Nick’s fingers and stuffed it into his own shirtfront. He patted Nick on the back and guided him back to the road.
    “You killed them with the .45,” Daley said. “Say it.”
    “I killed them with the .45.”
    “That’s good, Nick. You’re going to be fine.”
    “We’re both okay,” Nick said, nodding his head repeatedly.
    “Right.”
    “Daley?”
    “Yeah?” The jeep was nearing, dust swirling in its path.
    “Can you make Seth leave me alone?”
    “I don’t think so, Nick, but by God, I’ll try my damnedest.”
    Nick was working on a tentative smile when the jeep stopped for them. He spit once on the way into the camp. No one seemed to notice or care, except his brother.

CHAPTER 4

    Tacoma, Washington
    Veterans Administration Medical Center
    1975

    NICK SAT in the vocational therapy room, the inner workings of a small lamp spread before him on a wobbly card table. They had expected him to make something. He balked at the beginning, and said such idiotic therapy should be reserved for men with paralytic brains. It was no wonder that returning veterans were unemployable, be thought, shuffling the pieces around. What kind of work could a basket weaver, lamp maker, ashtray designer do on the outside anyway?
    Shakey was talking to him. He sat to Nick’s right, gluing together Popsicle sticks into the shape of an Apache village. He claimed he was Apache, although no one knew what an Apache village was supposed to look like.
    Shakey talked for hours nonstop, flitting from subject to obscure subject. Nick often tuned him out.
    “Neutron stars have a density comparable to our sun’s, but their radius is only a few kilometers. Imagine one of them falling on us. Pow! Our tiny planet would be instantly vaporized." Shakey obviously was excited at the prospect.
    Nick rolled the lamp socket in his hands, clicking the black button switch on and off. Neutron stars. Now it was a lesson in celestial phenomena. Shakey's knowledge had no end.
    Nick studied the older man's face. Heavy jowls, pendulous full lips, hooded salamander eyes that seldom blinked. Shakey had been in Pearl Harbor when the bombs fell. When they retrieved him from the water, he was shaking like an old palsied man. The shaking never stopped. Shakey's tremors sometimes quieted, permitting him to enter the mainstream of life outside the V.A. hospital. When they returned, interfering with whatever job he was able to secure, Shakey would admit himself for a two month stay.
    It scorned highly unlikely to Nick that the man would ever get the Popsicle sticks to stand teepee fashion.
    Every third one slipped from tremulous fingers and clattered to the floor. There were more sticks around his feet than in the Indian village.
    "Where do you learn all that stuff?" Nick asked.
    "Encyclopedias," Shakey said. "Where else?"
    "Do you learn everything in the encyclopedias?"
    "Not everything. That's not realistic. I know quite a lot though," Shame admitted.
    "Why bother? What good’s it gonna do you?"
    "Well, knowing things is good for you. Take a neutron star, for instance…”
    "You already told me about the neutron star," Nick interrupted.
    "Oh, yes, of course. Then what about pre-Columbian art? I can tell you about the classic Maya period. There's a fresco at Bonampak, Mexico..."
    “Never mind that.