The Cold Spot Read Online Free PDF Page B

aisle and disappeared through the door into the lobby.
    Chase’s pulse twisted in his neck, and with death on the screen and maybe a jail term coming up due to this next move, his mind wandered back to a scene of happiness when he was a kid. His mother and father dancing in the living room on New Year’s, their laughter forever alive inside him. Their deaths forever seared into him. A thief never followed his heart, he always planned every move out and had at least three escape routes in place. You scored or you ran. Chase fought the instincts ingrained in him by his grandfather. He understood with a sudden clarity that he was terrified of his own mounting loneliness, for fear he would become even more like Jonah.
    Chase slid next to Lila, easing into Molly Mae’s seat, and put his feet up on the chair in front of him. She’d left some of her candy behind and in the darkness he plucked a few pieces out of the box.
    The little killer chick was crying about her lack of a normal childhood and the government black ops and scientists who’d created her were making speeches about fighting for the American Way. A few moments later she was chopping the main villain in the throat as a nuclear bomb ticked down. Chase kept trying to think of something slick to say and thought maybe he had it now. He opened his mouth.
    Without turning to look at him, Deputy Sheriff Lila Bodeen pressed a snub .32 into his ribs and said, “Now that there is one hell of a disguise, stranger.”
    Okay, now he needed something else to say instead. Nothing was coming, the bomb beeping at ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven—
    “But what do you think of the mustache?” he asked.
    “Is it real or is that a rat’s ass glued to your lip?”
    Christ, that was a much better line than anything he could come up with. She was going to trounce him at this. “Only one way to discover the truth. You’ll have to gather the empirical datum on your own.”
    She frowned, the bright light from the screen igniting the furrows in her brow. “You one of them college-educated outlaws?”
    Someone shushed them and they leaned their heads closer together.
    “No,” he whispered. “The fat scientist guy just told the little vicious chick that.”
    Lila nodded and dug the .32 in deeper, and Chase ground his back teeth together. She said, “Do I take it you’ve been struck with a case of conscience and are planning on turning yourself in?”
    “I just wanted to watch the movie.”
    “I admit I was liking it myself. Now the call of justice will interrupt me on my day off.”
    “I regret that,” Chase said. He let out a chuckle, feeling cool but not cold. A nervous tremor worked through him for a lot of reasons besides the fact that an extra foot-pound of pressure from her index finger would blast his spleen over the teenage couple sitting behind him.
    “Be a shame if you had to waste your $3.25 matinee money,” he said. “How about if you turn me in afterward?”
    “You think I won’t?” Lila asked.
    “Let’s find out.”
    It was then that Molly Mae returned from the ladies’ room and said, “Who’s this roughneck that’s been eatin’ my peanut clusters!”
             
    After gathering up her remaining candy, Molly Mae picked up on the undercurrents, maybe spotted the gleam of the gun in Chase’s ribs, and with a huff that blew more poof into her poofy hair, she moved an aisle down.
    The assassin girl defused the bomb, discovered the whereabouts of her real parents, tried to act like a normal girl but eventually garotted a terrorist in front of her mother’s coffee klatch, and finally decided to go live with the scientists again. Chase and Lila finished watching the film and sat in their seats, nodding as her friends and neighbors walked by, his bruised ribs really starting to kill him, until the theater completely emptied.
    She said, “Guess it’s time to escort you over to the jail.”
    “Nice day out. Maybe we can walk