Cost of Life by Joshua Corin

Author:Joshua Corin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2015-03-17T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 29

Coincidentally, Madeline Wright’s carefree, fun-loving id, when it spoke to her, spoke with Xana’s voice, and right now it was telling her to forget about the cramp in her right calf and hike another five hundred vertical feet to the wooded top of Jefferson Hill. The sun was warm, the air was clean, and the view promised to be outstanding. She might be able to see the marble monuments around the National Mall from up there and even Bellum Vellum’s tall brownstone on K Street. After all, the District was only twenty miles away and really, what else did she have to do on this beautiful Fourth of July? Who else did she have to do it with?

The copse where Madeline had stopped to catch her breath and consider her options was halfway up the purple trail, the trail reserved for the most hard-core hikers. The slope was the steepest and least forgiving. Thus, despite her well-selected boots, despite her habitual Pilates and Bikram Yoga, despite having climbed mountains since she was thirteen years old, the cramp at the back of her calf.

Madeline massaged at the muscle knot. In a pocket of her shorts, she had a brace of aspirin just for this occasion and plenty of water left in the twenty-five-ounce silver cylinder she had tucked in a hip holster. She sipped some of the cold water but denied herself the painkillers. Drugs were for emergencies only.

She inhaled a lungful of uncontaminated, unpolluted, unblemished air. The pine trees smelled like childhood. A small sign carved out of wood and posted into the earth informed her she was at the midpoint of the purple path. Although the peak was a mere five hundred more feet up from the copse, the path’s winding tangle stretched the hike to a little over a mile. Certainly she wasn’t going to let a little muscle pain literally bring her down.

Yes. Yes, she was.

Madeline tucked her water bottle back into its holster and ambled the reverse path toward the hill’s base. Truth be told, she’d made her decision the moment she’d heard Xana’s voice in her head. Whenever her inner demon offered advice, she knew to go the other way.

For that, she was grateful.

On the trip back to her car, she thought quite a bit about Xana. She knew her ex was out of rehab. She’d had the date of Xana’s release programmed into her calendar. She had no intention of contacting her—especially after their brief, ugly encounter a few months ago—but it never hurt to know these things.

Madeline was not ever going to contact Xana again.

Of that she was almost positive.

Her Porsche 911 Carrera RS was where she left it, covered under a silver polyester tarp that she tugged off and tucked into the sports car’s tiny trunk. The car’s red sheen, which she had waxed once a week, lit up in the sunlight like a demon’s eye. She yoga-stretched her ligaments and then folded herself into the driver’s bucket seat. The leather crinkled hello.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.