The Ninth Step Read Online Free PDF

handmade miniatures.
    “Eyes on the road, please.”
    “I’m watching.”
    “Just let me do it for you. I’m capable.”
    Of course Judy was capable, but Edgar had the art of the sniper bid down to a science. It had to be timed just right. And a delay had to be factored in when doing it on a cell hookup. Even if it was a nanosecond. He refreshed the page. Still no bids. The starting bid was $350.00, a bit of an expenditure, but a unique box like this one was easily worth thousands. In the listing title, the seller had misspelled Japanese as
Jappanese
, so a lot of people (other collectors with deeper pockets who quite often outbid Edgar and whom he thought of as his “online nemeses”) would miss the listing entirely. Edgar maintained listing alerts for keywords like
puzle
and
Japenese
. Sometimes diligence paid off. He felt a stab of excitement; he just might get it at the ridiculously low opening bid.
    “You’re drifting.”
    Edgar looked up and corrected the car back to the right of the yellow lines.
    He cued up his maximum bid, his finger poised over the “confirm bid” button, gauging for the exact right moment.
    The headlights of a passing car momentarily illuminated the interior, making it harder to see the screen.
    “Edgar!”
    Lights filled the car again. Too bright this time, not passing, but filling the car. Too bright. Edgar looked forward, swerving. Too bright. Too late.

11
THE MONOTONOUS ELECTRONIC
HUM OF A FLATLINE
    The bay doors of the emergency room slammed open as paramedics burst in with a loaded gurney.
    Judy Woolrich’s body was motionless. Her hair was blackly matted with coagulated blood.
    Right behind her, on a second gurney, Edgar was wheeled in. He was very much awake and aware of what was going on, but the paramedics had placed a head stabilization device around his upper body. He could not sit up. He was like a bug on its back. His glasses had been lost in the wreck, and his pale eyes looked alien without them.
    Edgar was placed in a treatment room by himself. In the adjoining room, a team of medical personnel worked on his wife. He could hear urgent orders shouted. He could see movingshadows cast through the observation window, but he could not raise himself to see what was happening. He heard the sound of a defibrillation machine cycling up to full charge, and the doctor calmly saying, “Clear.” This procedure was repeated several times until there was only the monotonous electronic hum of a flatline.

12
SUBTLE BUT PERMANENT
BRAIN DAMAGE
    Early sunlight streamed across Helen’s closed eyes. The two cats, Molly and Agnes, whom Helen had dubbed “The Yellow and Black Attack” because of their coloring, crisscrossed over her sleeping form, anxious for her to wake up and feed them. For some reason, their owner had failed to keep to the appointed feeding schedule, but even the cats remembered that this had happened before and were not too terribly anxious. This morning, the main source of Molly’s and Agnes’s anxiety was the Great Dane that had invaded their home and now rested with its head on their owner’s pillow.
    Mitzi whined and licked Helen’s face, saturating it. Helen’s breath caught and her bloodshot eyes opened. And the anxiety hit her just that quick. Full-blown panic; her mind raced, thevery organs of her body cried out with energy-draining pain. A deep cough racked her chest. It felt like lung tissue had ripped. She remembered the fog machine. Who knew what all chemicals they used in those things? Far worse than secondhand smoke. Small-cell carcinoma. Stage four. Mesothelioma. Emphysema. Black lung. Neurotoxins attacking her synapses. Subtle but permanent brain damage. Cumulative.
    No furniture appeared to be chewed on, and there weren’t any immediately evident piles of poop, so letting the dog roam free didn’t appear to have been too big of an error in judgment. She must have let her into the house when she came in through the garage last night. She let