Whispers Read Online Free PDF Page A

on a scent, Zach wouldn’t quit until he had Reilly treed.
    “ I told you, man,” Reilly said. “I’m not spilling my guts to you or anyone else.”
    “ You’d spill to Oprah. Everyone spills to Oprah.”
    “ Yeah, well, if Oprah ever has me on and I spill, you can say I told you so.”
    “ That’s cold, man.”
    Reilly wasn’t really worried about Zach tripping him up. He wasn’t a man to cave under pressure. But what if now that they were in Diablo Springs, Zach found other sources? What if he caught another scent? What if he realized Reilly hadn’t come because of the crazy woman in the minivan behind them?
    Reilly didn’t say anything for a minute and then he asked, “Why do you care, anyway? Why the hell do you give a shit about me and my brother?”
    “ You guys were great. Badlands could have had it all.”
    “ Not even close. Cut the crap, Zach. What do you really want?”
    Zach gave him a look across the dark cab. “I want to know how someone can have it all and just piss it away.”
    Reilly tightened his grip on the wheel. Fair enough.
    He turned after the Circle K and made his way into downtown Diablo Springs. The view temporarily distracted his passenger and Reilly had a moment of reprieve.
    “ Christ,” Zach said, peering out the window. “People live here?”
    Reilly shrugged, trying to smile though it wasn’t really funny. People did live here, though why in hell, he didn’t know.
    “ There’s not even a stoplight,” Zach said in the same tone of voice he might declare an alien landing at the corner.
    “ There’s one,” Reilly said.
    “ I can’t believe this is where you grew up.”
    “ Believe it. I lived right down Rough Street. Fourth house on the left.”
    He stared at the house he was raised in, now boarded up and overrun with scrub and, most likely, rodents and bugs. This was the desert and no place on earth was more hospitable to vermin. He’d written a number-one single and two bestsellers about the things that creeped and crawled across the hot sands of Arizona.
    Zach snorted. “What a dump.”
    “ Yeah,” Reilly said, “what a dump.”
    He pulled up to the curb in front of the Diablo, where they’d be staying for the next few days if Chloe could be believed. She said she’d spoken to Carolina Beck just yesterday and confirmed reservations for herself, her disciples, and Nathan Reilly Alexander. Zach was the only surprise it seemed. And yet, she didn’t really seem that surprised at all. That irked him nearly as much as her continued use of “Nathan.”
    Lightning sizzled and sparked above them, turning the windows into glowing eyes of malice. The giant mesquite in the front swayed dangerously and smacked the house with sagging branches. Rock and cactus made a hostile and skeletal garden of the front yard and tumbleweed bounced its way past them to lodge in the neighbor’s fence.
    Reilly glanced at his watch. It was nearly two a.m., but lights blazed at the house. A welcoming sight in a town that gave desolation new meaning.
    He and Zach stepped from his Jeep.
    “ What is this place?” Zach asked, standing beside him.
    “ It used to be a hotel... saloon ... casino ... fine dining ... brothel... ,” Reilly said. “Kind of one-stop shopping for the outlaw in need.”
    “ Is that a fact,” Zach answered, suitably impressed. “A whorehouse. Cool.”
    The oppressive heat was intensified by the brooding storm overhead. It felt like they’d stepped into a damp electric blanket with a buzzing short deep within its circuitry. In the distance the ruins of the old hot springs stuck up like black bones against the gray-green sky. There were flashing lights out there—police cars, it looked like. He frowned, wondering if the Dead Lights had lured another victim into the caverns of the dried-up springs.
    “ How do people survive in this?” Zach wanted to know.
    “ You’re lucky it’s night.” Reilly looked away from the flashing lights to watch the younger man