The Sentinel Read Online Free PDF Page A

carrying a tray which held several sandwiches, some Cokes and a bottle of white wine. "The dark bread is tongue," he announced. "The rye is roast beef." He smiled and began to distribute the food. "Allison?" he asked after the other two models had chosen.
    "In a moment," she replied submissively, her arms dangling limply over the supports of the chair, her legs stiffly extended.
    "Well?" he prodded, gesturing to the pictures.
    "Quite good," answered Jennifer. She removed a pair of glasses from her purse-wire rims-placed them on her fine-boned nose, held the pictures to the light and re-examined them closely. "Who is the girl?"
    "You don't know her."
    "A model?"
    "No. Just a friend." He winked suggestively.
    "I admire the quality."
    "Natural?"
    "Very. How did you get it?"
    "Ah," he exclaimed lasciviously. "Natural light and voyeurism. The camera is a remarkable voyeur. With nudes, the texture of the subject is most important but with the knowledge of the camera's presence, the normal serenity of the body is lost. Look at her face. I could never have achieved the subtlety you see there if she had known I was shooting her. The narcissism wouldn't be as clearly stated." He lifted one of the photos and held it to the light. "Remarkable realism," he declared with a note of self-acclaim.
    He began to discuss the visual ramifications.
    Then it happened.
    Allison had remained seated in the chair, casually thumbing through a copy of Vogue. The headache came first. Almost instantly, as if it had been there all along but had been held back by a dam whose ramparts had suddenly been torn away. It was centered at the base of her skull. Her initial reaction was surprise, then consternation. She had felt fine all week. In fact, the last headache had occurred the morning Miss Logan had called with the approval. And that really wasn't a headache, just a dull pressure that she had attributed to a residue of tension. And now? There seemed to be no logical explanation other than a reaction to the long hours under the hot lights. Yet, if it had just been a migraine, she would have dismissed it summarily. There was also a sensation of constriction along her back that made her skin prickle as if a slab of dry ice had been jammed against her body. Unnerved, she sat up, threw the magazine on the chair, walked to the closed skylight and looked over the rooftops. There wasn't much of a view. A few chimneys. The moon in its last quarter. She shook her head in a vain attempt to drive away the pain, then she turned back toward the bar and listened. "Are you sure you couldn't achieve the same effect with the right model?" she heard Lois ask. But was "hearing" the right word? The sounds were muffled as if the vibrations were being projected through a sonic sponge.
    Then they ceased altogether.
    She stumbled back against the glass panes. They vibrated noisily; several cracked.
    Everyone turned, shocked, watching.
    "I . . . I," Allison mumbled as a tingling sensation coursed along the insides of her arms toward the shoulders. Quickly she felt it spread through all her extremities and then give way to a far more alarming perception: a total deadness. Frantically, she began to rub her hands together.
    Jack hurled himself over the bar, grabbed her as she was beginning to fall and carried her over the wires to the armchair. Jennifer crushed her cigarette and squirmed in pursuit.
    "Allison," Jack shouted, "what's the matter?"
    "I don't know!" Allison stammered in garbled tones, terrified.
    "Get some ice!" said Jack.
    Lois pulled several cubes from the ice bucket, wrapped them in a silk scarf and handed them to him; he pressed the bundle against her forehead after wiping off the beads of sweat.
    Allison lifted her hands to her neck and rubbed the flesh. Her pulse slowed. She looked around the room and blinked unsurely as the shapes that had decomposed during the onslaught of the pain began to reassume coherency. She leaned forward in the chair and gripped her knees.