The Breathtaker Read Online Free PDF Page A

right eye and cheekbone.
    The world swam for an instant as Charlie stood up and took a step backward. He glanced around the master bedroom. The mattress was missing from the bed and the box spring was wet with rain. He heard an odd creaking sound. It was coming from somewhere above him. There was an explosion of splinters as something came crashing through the ruined plaster over his head, and a scream lodged in his throat as he leaped away.
    Rob Pepper’s torso was dangling from the ceiling like an upside-down jack-in-the-box. He was stuck like a pincushion with flying debris—face, neck, chest. The bottom half of his body remained lodged in the crumbling plaster while the upper half swung hideously back and forth.
    Charlie dragged his hand across his mouth, the fear crowding in on him. Everything stood still for a moment. The house was shaking with wind, and he suddenly wondered if the structure was stable. Maybe it had sustained more damage than he’d initially thought. He backed away from the bodies and almost tripped on an overturned rocking chair. He caught his balance and pivoted, then found himself on the edge of a precipice, floorboards jutting into nothingness.
    Jenna Pepper had been flung into a nearby tree by the wind, her body nestled in a bed of tangled branches just a few yards from where he stood. She was a petite woman, five foot two, maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet. Her sleek dark hair was cropped short, and she wore faded Levi’s and a peach-colored pullover top, no shoes or socks on her slender feet. Charlie swallowed hard at the sight of the mahogany bedpost protruding like the hilt of a knife from her neck. She had penetrating injuries to her chest with what looked like a staircase baluster, and the bloodstains on her pullover were like scattered red roses. Squinting hard, he thought he could detect defensive wounds to her hands and forearms.
    Something stirred in him. The old-fashioned roller shades flapped in the wind as he walked back over to where Rob Pepper dangled from the rafters. Charlie reached for his hands and turned them palms-up. There were defensive wounds to his forearms, standard slash marks from a knife or a blade.
Drag marks in the hallway leading up the stairs…
    Charlie got on his portable and said with some urgency, “Lester? I want you to cordon off the area.”
    “Some of the rescue workers just pulled up, Chief.”
    “Send them away. Access to the area is being restricted. Post a man at either end of the street. If anybody asks, tell them we’re having problems with gas leaks.” He stared into Rob’s eyes—unfocused eyes that seemed to be retracted into infinite regret. “Lester? Did you get all that?”
    “Are they dead?”
    “Yeah,” he said with wonder, “they’re all dead.”

3
    T HAT NIGHT , military men in green jeeps patrolled the streets, while TV trucks cruised the ruins in search of anything poignant or shocking they could put on the eleven o’clock news. Volunteers with chain saws helped clear the debris from the roads so that the gas company crews could check for damaged lines. Most of the cops on duty that day didn’t go home when their shifts were over, and the town’s fire crew worked all night long to contain the sporadic fires. Meanwhile, the screams of ambulances and police cars never let up.
    Around 8:00 P.M. , the temperature dropped and a cold driving rain pummeled the town. A thousand residents left their unheated, unlit homes for the warmth of the Red Cross shelters, where volunteers served up free meals of pork ribs from Babe’s Bar-B-Q and the works on Texas toast from the Roadside Diner. At the damage site, people stood around in amazement in the freezing-ass rain, while a pea-soup fog tinted with the fiery glow of the strobing emergency lights settled over everything. Men passed around paper bags, talking softly among themselves, while housewives with no homes to go back to traded drags off cigarettes and prowled through the