The Man With No Time Read Online Free PDF

Handsome said. Actually, he said “Salowly.” He tapped my shoulder with the barrel of his gun. “Children missing?”
    “Yes,” I said, scared enough to volunteer information. “Two. Twins.”
    “How old?”
    “Four,” I said.
    “Who's mommy?” Handsome asked.
    “I am,” Eleanor said, before Pansy could speak. Her face was paper-white.
    “And daddy?” That was Handsome again.
    “Here,” Horace said.
    “Then this is the deal,” Handsome said calmly. “We shoot mommy if daddy won't tell us where Lo is.” My sweat glands suddenly let go, a cascade down my sides.
    “Get up, Mommy,” Handsome said to Eleanor. “Get up and go to the wall.”
    Eleanor stood, slowly and gracefully, smiling regretfully at Handsome, as though he were a child whose intelligence she'd overestimated. She went to the wall at the long side of the room and put a steadying hand on the mantel over the false fireplace, where the family shrine had been. I'd never loved her so much. “Should I face you,” she asked, “or turn away?”
    “Up to you,” Handsome said with a shrug.
    “Then I'll face you,” Eleanor said. “That way, you'll remember me.”
    She turned to face him fully and put her hands behind her, offering him her heart, her lungs, her stomach, all the places that couldn't be fixed.
    “Where's Lo?” Handsome asked again.
    “I don't know,” Horace said. “Honest to God—”
    “We shoot mommy in the knees first,” Handsome said. “Then in the elbows. That's four. Number five is for keeps.”
    Dumbo-Ears looked startled. “Aaahhh,” he said. It might have been a protest.
    “He's not here,” Horace said hoarsely.
    “Left knee,” Handsome said, lowering the gun that was pointed at Eleanor.
    “Wait,” Pansy shrilled. “I mommy, not her. She only—”
    Dumbo-Ears looked from Eleanor to her, and Handsome took a step forward so that he was beside me, and raised the gun. I shifted my weight, ready to slam him with my shoulder, and then there was a shuffling sound behind us and a sharp crack, and Handsome hurtled past, hitting me as he fell. A tornado followed him.
    “Badboy,” Mrs. Chan bellowed, battering Handsome again with the wooden handles of her umbrellas, two of them, carried against the certainty that it would rain double-hard wherever she was. “Badboy, badboy, badboy.”
    I went for Dumbo-Ears's throat and gun arm and got an elbow around them, jerking my arm upward to point the barrel of his gun at the ceiling. It went off twice, showering Horace and Pansy with plaster, at the precise moments that Mrs. Chan's umbrellas struck Handsome, the sound making the blows seem supernaturally hard. Handsome, realizing that his assailant was a woman in her sixties, rose to one knee and brought the gun to bear on her, just as Horace launched himself off the couch and knocked him to the floor on his side. The two of them sprawled there, and Dumbo-Ears freed himself from my grasp with surprisingly wiry arms and brought the gun around into my face.
    I was backing away, trying to outrun the bullet, when something brown and compact flew snarling through the air and attached itself to Dumbo-Ears's right shoulder. Flailing at Bravo, he let the gun sag, and I grabbed it and swung it to the right, hearing a little pop as his finger, caught in the trigger guard, was dislocated.
    “That's it,” I screamed, reversing the gun and pulling the trigger and spraying the walls with high-velocity slugs. The noise got everyone's attention. Mrs. Chan stopped biting Handsome's thigh, and Handsome looked up from the tangle just long enough to let Horace seize the gun in his hands. Horace turned it around and pointed it at Handsome's chest. The kid went limp, lying on his back and panting. Bravo, growling low in his throat, backed off and then sat.
    “My hero,” Eleanor said to me. Or maybe to Bravo. Then her knees went, and she toppled onto the couch.
    No one else spoke for a moment. We were all panting. Dumbo-Ears was clutching