Testament Read Online Free PDF Page A

We’re not alone in this. There are dozens of other organizations like us. W e alone have twenty thousand trained dependables, another twenty thousand waiting to be trained. Put our numbers in with in all the other loyalist groups in this country, and you come up with a figure that’s just slightly under the present strength of the United States Marine Corps, which was two hundred and four thousand the last time I checked. And they’re everywhere, in industry and government, in law enforcement and the military. The guy you bought your car from, the quiet fellow who lives up the street, any of them might easily be one of us.”
    He stood where he had closed the door, and glanced up the stairs, and the sight of Sarah startled him.
    She was holding her stomach. “Daddy, I’m sick.”
    “How bad?” He hurried up the stairs to her.
    “I need to throw up.”
    The pills from the doctor, he thought angrily and tried to calm himself. Things aren’t bad enough. These pills made us sick.
    And then he suddenly wondered if he’d been right in the first place. Maybe the doctor was from Kess and the pills were poisoned, slow-acting to give the doctor time to get away.
    He almost panicked. Seeing Sarah’s helpless face, he struggled not to. Slow-acting poison didn’t make sense, he told himself, convincing himself. When the symptoms showed up, there’d be time to get an antidote.
    Sure.
    He thought it through again.
    Sure.
    “It’s all right,” he said as calmly as he could. “If you throw up, you’ll feel better. Come on.”
    He put his arm around her and took her upstairs to the bathroom and raised the toilet seat.
    “Let your stomach throw up if it wants to,” he told her gently. “Kneel down here and I’ll hold you. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
    He waited with her.
    “Daddy?” she said, kneeling before the bowl.
    “Yes, sweetheart.”
    “Will I have one of those that Mommy said?”
    “One of what, sweetheart? I’m not sure what you mean.”
    “One of those that Mommy thought Samantha had because she was sixteen years old.”
    He didn’t understand. He tried to think back to when the cat had been poisoned and what Claire might have said. After Ethan and everything else, that seemed such a very long time ago.
    “You mean a stroke?”
    “Yes. Will I have one of those when I get to be sixteen?”
    “Sarah, you know that Samantha was poisoned. I want you to realize that. I don’t want you to eat anything without asking me first.”
    “But when I’m sixteen, will I have one of those?”
    “No. Cats age differently than people. With a cat, sixteen is like being eighty.”
    “Then you won’t have one of those for a long time yet.”
    Suddenly he was holding her tight, hugging her, kissing her neck. “That’s right, sweetheart. God, I hope to be around for a long, long time yet.”
    She didn’t react, just knelt there while he hugged and kissed her.
    “Daddy?”
    “Yes.”
    “Is Ethan in heaven with Samantha?”
    He was beginning to understand now. Slowly he drew back to look at her.
    “Sarah, let me ask you something.”
    She didn’t answer.
    “Are you really sick, or did you just want somebody to talk to? You’re lonely, isn’t that it? You don’t understand what’s happening, and you’re lonely and worried?”
    She lowered her head and nodded.
    “You should have told me. Honestly I wouldn’t have minded. This way you had me sorry you were sick.”
    She still didn’t say anything.
    “Listen, there’s nothing to worry about. Everything is going to be fine. I’ll tell you what. There’s something I need to do, but first I’ll take you back into the bedroom and tuck you in with Mommy and wait with you a while. Does that sound all right?”
    She just raised her head and looked at him.
    What he had to do was phone Webster and tell him about the man who’d called. Maybe Webster would have the nearby houses searched. Something. Anything. He had put off phoning Webster almost as long