The Innocence Game by Michael Harvey

Author:Michael Harvey
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Suspense, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9780307961266
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2013-05-01T07:00:00+00:00

23

Over the years, he’d reduced the whole thing to an art form. Long walks, looping in and out of neighborhoods, identifying patterns, trolling for victims. Usually, he was hunting children. Ones who didn’t fit in. Ones who needed a friend. Today, however, was different. Today he was simply looking for a way in.

The green-and-white house appeared to be all its age in the morning light. On his third pass down the block, he saw the boy leave and noted three men in a black sedan at the corner. The men made their move fifteen minutes later. They forced the front door, stayed for almost an hour, and came out the way they went in. That was four hours ago. Now he approached the house and pushed at the door. It creaked open. His nostrils quivered. The smell of stale fear permeated the space. He wandered through the first floor, stopping here and there to touch something. They’d done a thorough job of searching the place. And hadn’t tried to hide it. He made his way down a hallway. The door to the basement was still locked. He forced it open and walked down the steps. The long, thick table was sleeping under a layer of dust. He wanted to take off his gloves and feel its surface, but couldn’t. Instead, he dropped to his hands and knees in a corner and felt along the floor for a seam. Then he took out a flat bar and began to work. Three minutes later, he’d pried up a foot-square block of cement. He plunged his hand into the dark hole, but it was empty. The man with the yellow eyes cursed. A single word that rang off the brick walls. A car pulled up outside with a squeak of springs. The man fitted the square of cement back into the floor and filled in the seams with dirt. Then he slipped into the backyard and worked his way around the block.

The boy was just getting out of the car. There was a girl behind the wheel. The same one from the lake. The boy carried himself like a man, but he wasn’t. Not yet. Maybe never. The girl pulled away from the curb. She cruised past the man with yellow eyes, barely aware he was there. He committed her tag number to memory. Then he watched the boy walk up the path to his front door. By the time the boy turned around, the man was gone.

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