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

course he kept his distance. He slept on her sofa, his headache finally breaking, but as he started from a nightmare around one, he heard the rains. Not outside, but in his head.
    ~
    He stayed a week in Rocheport and found it one of the most engaging places in the Midwest. Standing on the rising limestone cliffs of the Manitou Bluffs, gazing out over the Missouri, a gentle breeze kissed him. The colors of spring, deep green and deeper blue, exploded. The hot weather had yet to break, the humidity choked, but today he felt happy. The sight was inspiring, and he tried to imagine the thrill for Lewis and Clark on discovering this place. They must have felt free. Alive. Something he hadn’t felt for a long time. How it must have been for them, traversing the river, not knowing what lay round the next bend. Every turn an exploration of the soul.
    Sarah-Jane was fun, a little folksy, a whole lot horny, and each night he had taken matters into his own hand, so to speak, before she got home. She had taken his lack of erections as well as a woman could, but the hurt had been there, lurking beneath that playful exterior. He hated himself for it, but he wasn’t using her for her flat; his feelings were genuine. Even so—
    He would tell her tonight.
    She took it well, better than he expected. She understood passing through meant just that, and the next day he was riding the back of a flatbed, north, to Kirksville. Still, he had this gnawing desire to stop moving, to find a place to hang his hat for more than a couple of days. The road—the running—wore like a terminal disease.
    He thanked the driver for the lift and walked into town. He took a room in a hotel for the night, and as he lay on the bed found his mind turning to Sarah-Jane. She had asked about his life on the road, going on about how exciting it must be, about how someday soon she was going to hit the road too, finally free herself of her dead-end job, of dead-end Rocheport. She had also gone on about his scars, how he had identical ones on each temple, how they couldn’t possibly be birthmarks. He’d finally convinced her otherwise, or at least, had gotten her to change the subject. He wondered if he should have stayed longer, and decided he’d made the right choice.
    He had liked her too much.
    ~
    Iowa beckoned, and by the third week in May he had crossed the state border, stopping over in Bloomfield. He thought he might detour east, for he had relatives (distant, in all sense of the word) in Davenport, and it had come to him that a surprise visit with ties, however loose, might stem the melancholy that had plagued him since Rocheport. More rain hadn’t helped, despite what Sarah-Jane had said. It had come last night in a downpour, eventually giving to that disheartening drizzle. It had been merciless.
    Keep north, he told himself as he stuck out his thumb at the edge of town, and a minute later he was sitting in the cool confines of a soft-top ’58 Sunliner and heading northwest toward Des Moines. He sat in the back, two college boys in front, a girl on his left. The driver wore black-rimmed sunglasses, sporting a who-gives-a-shit grin that he had once sported. The other wore the same sunglasses. The girl didn’t have a pair and kept squinting the whole time. The radio blared a Chuck Berry tune.
    “Wisconsin? You’re goin’ the wrong way, mister,” the boy on the passenger side said with a laugh. He was all turned around, his arm slung up over the seat.
    “No rush,” Kain said, his rising voice barely audible above Chuck Berry and the wind. “So what’s in Des Moines?”
    “Jobs and adventure,” the girl shouted. “I’m Mary.” She held out her hand to shake, and Kain took it. Playfully, he drew it to his lips and kissed it. The girl blushed. The boy on the passenger side gave him a look. The driver didn’t seem to care.
    “Nice wheels,” he said, and had to repeat it when a truck passed them going the other way.
    The driver spoke. “It gets