Velvet Rain - A Dark Thriller Read Online Free PDF Page A

pungent odor that brought tears to their eyes. One woman claimed she had seen a thick, glowing mist at various times, but others had dismissed her, saying she had been drinking excessively and had fallen violently ill. The good Mr. Jacobsen insisted it wasn’t about the money, it was only twenty dollars, what had upset him so much—what had frightened him so deeply he had felt compelled to call authorities—was the drifter who could do magic.
    ~
    Brikker turned up the lamp. It was dying now.
    The drifter who could do magic.
    Oh yes, magic … the darkest kind, to be sure.
    He eased back with a grin. Let the magic of nicotine soothe him.
    So Richards was getting sloppy.
    It was so unlike the man. The Richards he knew was determined and sharp. Focused.
    Had he tired of the chase? Slipped to a false sense of security? Perhaps. But it would be unwise to underestimate him, most unwise. One did not take lightly the power the man could wield. It was the stuff of earthquakes and tsunamis, blitzkrieg and atom bombs, the stuff of legend—ha—the stuff that drove men mad with want.
    With four fine slits of his nail, the physician cut out the article with surgical precision and secured it in the scrapbook with adhesive tape. He read it again, knowing he would read it again tomorrow, then closed the book and returned it to the drawer.
    Brikker righted the hourglass. He sat pensively, fixed on the steady flow of sand as each grain slipped from now to past. How easy it was to simply watch; how simple to suffer the mercy of Time’s ceaseless wrath. And yet, he could grab hold of the instrument of its measure and upset it, slow it, speed it, and dare say stop it, with all the ease in the world.
    He took the timepiece in hand. He tilted it slightly, allowing but a few grains to fall. Faster. Still faster. Stop. He reversed it, the sand becoming whole again, as if forging a bold new now. How simple it was. How magic.
    How elusive, indeed.
    Distant thunder rumbled in the desert. The Doctor swiveled to the window and felt a cold turn of his heart. Rain had begun to fall. Barely enough to make a difference, a mere splatter on the bulletproof glass.
    Do you hear the rains, Richards? Do you hear them?
    You’re not in Willow Springs. Not now … not still. Louisiana, perhaps. But no further west. I doubt you’d return to Texas, my friend.
    North, then?
    Do you hear the rains?
    He didn’t feel his grip tighten round the timepiece; hear the glass shatter as he crushed it. Blood seeped through his fingers. He cast a gaze that spilled across the wastelands and stretched beyond that boundless horizon. The rain had stopped as quickly as it had come, as if a great hand had swept it away … as if it had never rained at all.
    I had you once, Richards, he thought, that nagging doubt rising in him again. I will have you again.
    The Doctor closed that singular eye, and with a dream, willed his future. He saw his hand reaching, grasping Time’s Wheel and turning it. Commanding it. And then, as his body trembled into that black abyss, he drifted into the mist, that glorious mist, dreaming of the drifter who could do magic. He would have Richards, oh yes, of that he was certain.
    It was just a matter of time.

~ 3
    Six months passed, and on a bright Thursday morning—the sixth morning of an extended stay in the back of a decrepit Buick Roadmaster, on a forgotten farm just outside of Linn—Kain soon found himself riding shotgun into Jefferson City. The girlish woman, a no-nonsense Missourian not a breath past twenty by his guess, made a point he keep his hands to himself should he feel the need for any funny business. He offered to pay for gas, and she flat-out refused. They crossed the Missouri River and rode into Columbia, the fine weather the pinnacle of their stilted conversation. She dropped him off at a roadside restaurant. She had said her name was Joan, just Joan, thank you, and that was that. The step-side pickup headed off.
    It was going on