Ghost Road Blues (Pine Deep 1)

On the floor Mike lay like a smashed bug, his limbs sprawled, his skin bloody and bruised, his face a ruin. The pain was everywhere, in every cell of his body, and Vic was there, ready to give him more of it.

And Mike Sweeney did not care.

He lifted his battered head, opened his puffed eyes, parted his split lips…and smiled up at Vic.

There must have been something in that smile beyond Mike’s joy in knowing that he could outlast this man. That he had taken the worst beating of his life and had endured it. There must have been something there, flickering in his bloodshot eyes or trembling in his mashed lips, that Vic read differently, or read wrong—or read correctly—because he took a single involuntary step backward and Mike saw something in Vic’s face that he had never expected to see. Something he didn’t believe he could see in Vic’s face.

He saw a flicker of fear.

Not much, just a touch, but it was there.

Vic was human after all.

Vic was just a human being, and Mike—well, Mike would endure him. And Iron Mike Sweeney, the Enemy of Evil, would outlast him.

The fear that had flickered in Vic’s eyes for the briefest of moments was gone and his usual dark intensity returned. He held his ground, but he lowered his hands.

“Now get up and get your sorry ass to bed. Go on—get out of my sight!”

It took Mike a while to get his arms and legs to work well enough to turn his aching body over onto hands and knees, and then to fingertips and toes, and then, swaying, to his feet. He took a couple of wandering sideways steps before orienting himself.

At the doorway to the kitchen he stopped, holding on to the frame, and turned for a moment to look back at Vic, and once more he gave his stepfather a bloody-?toothed smile.

Vic didn’t say another word as Mike tottered away and then slowly clawed his way upstairs.

2

Standing in the parking lot, Crow watched the last of the tourists and staff go and then heaved out a long sigh of mingled relief and weariness. He was tired, and what he really wanted was to go home and crawl into bed, but…he smiled as the thought sprang into his mind, someone was waiting with a late dinner for him.

He walked back into the office to switch off the lights, but before he did he reached for the phone.

Mark Guthrie heard two sounds almost at once.

The first was the first ring of the telephone, and there was a split fraction of a second in which he realized that whoever was calling could send help if only he could manage to get over to the phone, to knock it off its cradle, to make some kind of sound that would let the caller know that there was trouble, but in the second part of that fractured second of time he heard a single sharp report. A gunshot.

Through the gag and through his fear, Mark tried to scream his father’s name, his sister’s name, and the name of God.

The phone kept ringing.

Crow set the phone down in disappointment, but at the very last moment, just as the handset was touching the plunger, there was a sound. It was just a muffled and inarticulate sound, and Crow tried to catch himself in time, but when he whipped the handset away from the cradle, the connection had already been broken.

“Shit!”

He pushed down on the plunger to clear the connection, got a dial tone, and punched in Val’s number again. Busy.

He tried again. Busy.

Once more. Still busy. Crow made a rude sound and hung up the phone. He stood there and looked around, assessing the place. Everything was locked up and dark.

“Okay then,” he said to nobody in particular, and started for the door. Just as he touched the knob he stopped, turned, and walked back to the phone, murmuring, “Once more for luck. ”

He punched in the numbers. Busy. “Shit balls,” he observed. He called Val’s cell. No answer except voice mail.

“This is bullshit,” he said aloud and left the office, locking it up nice and tight, crunched across the gravel to where Missy waited for him, and climbed in. He turned on the motor and then tugged the pistol out of his waistband and crammed it back into the glove compartment. Then he put the car into drive and in a spray of gravel, he spun wheels in the direction of the Guthrie farm.

3

Val ran as if all the evil things in the dark were at her heels.