The Last King of Texas by Rick Riordan

Author:Rick Riordan [Riordan, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Private Investigators, Mystery & Detective, Private Investigators - Texas, General, Mystery Fiction, Navarre; Tres (Fictitious Character), San Antonio (Tex.), College Teachers, Fiction, English Teachers, Texas
ISBN: 9780553801569
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 2000-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

Your typical light verse from a seventeen-year-old girl.

Several pages later.

I should have stayed inside this afternoon. The letter came.

Acceptance. Full scholarship. Grandmother and I set a jar of raspberry sun tea under the apple tree and we danced. Grandmother with her cane and all. We laughed at the chickens. I thought of college. And then the car in the gravel drive and Hector walked up with Him. After two years. He was only larger, no less or more frightening. A devil like that can have only His fixed amount of horror, never more or less than 100% — as a child, as a man. I should have stayed inside. I knew His look, the weighing He did. I was naked on a scale. I took my letter and I went inside. My grandmother became old again, hobbling alongside and muttering encouragement about college, but I just felt His eyes on my back. I knew what He was thinking. I should have stayed inside.

The other entries were equally intense. Tiring to read, unsatisfying. They told me about Sandra Mara like an intravenous feeding.

I skipped to the end and read the last paragraph.

How could a few minutes in a hallway shake me so much? He's so unexpected. I still can't write about it without catching my breath. Recognition in a dozen words, maybe less. He'd been standing in the same shadows as I, knew them instantly.

He kissed me today.

I closed the journal. Then I sat watching the light die in the crape myrtle outside the kitchen window.

When the light was gone, I went out to my car.

Fifteen minutes later I was pulling up in front of RideWorks, Inc.

It wasn't any prettier than it had been two nights before, but it was a hell of a lot more crowded. Rusted pickup trucks and low-rider Chevies lined the curb. The chain-link gate was open and the Super-Whirl Erainya and I had seen in pieces in the warehouse on Tuesday was now fully assembled in the yard, workers buzzing around it. The ride's giant metal arms were fully extended, lit with purple and yellow bulbs like dingo balls.

I walked through the gates, one hand in my pocket, the other slapping Sandra Mara's journal against my thigh. When I caught the eye of a worker, I smiled amiably, pointed toward the office door. "Del?"

The worker had a Fu Manchu mustache and a grimy face. On his head was a metal welder's visor the size of a snowboard. He considered my question, shrugged, then went back to his cigarette.

I went up the office steps, past the carousel animals, into the Room of Infinite Gimme Caps. No one was passed out on the secretary's desk this time. Del's office door was open. The restroom door at the other end of the reception area was closed and muffled thumping noises were coming from behind it.

I poked my head into Del's office.

Empty. Jeremiah Brandon smiled coldly at me from the 1940s photograph on the wall, daring me to trespass, double-daring me to sit at his son's desk.

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.