Donovan Creed Books 1-8 by John Locke

Author:John Locke [Locke, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781781854341
Publisher: Head of Zeus Ltd.

21.

A LONG, LOW rumble woke us up an hour before dawn. Remembering what happened the last time I heard that sound, I jumped out of bed and checked the window, wondering if another hailstorm was headed our way. Thankfully, all was calm. Patches of heat lightning lit up the distant sky.

“You okay?” I said.

Rachel murmured, “I’m tired. Go back to sleep.”

“How’d you know the kid’s name?”

“What kid?” She seemed half asleep as she said it.

I raised the volume in my voice to a conversational level. “The kid that got burned in the pig pit yesterday, the fire ant kid.”

She lay still a moment, and then yawned. “I went to check on him in the hospital.”

“When?”

“The morning after that thing with the fire ants.”

She settled back into her breathing rhythm and I thought about that morning and how I’d gone for a long run. I remembered returning to the Inn, and Beth mentioning Rachel had gone somewhere in the car. So that made sense. But Rachel had gone to see the kid before I agreed to help Beth at The Seaside. Which meant there was more to the story.

“You saw him again, though.”

She hesitated a moment, then sighed and propped herself up on one elbow.

“Is this really so important we have to talk about it now?”

“That depends on your answer to my last question.”

She thought a minute. “Did I see him again? Yes. Why, you think I’m cheating on you?”

“No,” I said, but her comment made me pause to think about the possibility. Rachel was a sexual being, and while I didn’t doubt for a minute that she was capable of cheating, I didn’t think the kid was physically capable of participating. Then again, he seemed awfully resilient.

Rachel said, “Then what, you think he’s holding that girl captive somewhere?”

“No, I think that’s a whole different thing.”

“Then what’s all this about D’Augie?”

“When you saw him that second time, did you happen to mention I’d taken the job as caretaker and that I was planning to kill the squirrels in the attic?”

She started to speak, but caught herself. She thought about it. “You think he somehow got up in the attic that day when all the snakes and squirrels got out?”

“There was a major hole in the plywood, where the stairs are,” I said. “Him falling through it might explain the casts on his arm and leg.”

“Why on earth would he want to climb up into that smelly old attic?”

“To kill me.”

She laughed. “Kill you? He doesn’t even know you! Kill you for what?”

I kissed her forehead. “That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?”

She looked at me wide-eyed. “Are you for real? D’Augie’s sweet. I think he’s just a weird, accident-prone kid.”

“Remember the knife I found that first night?”

“Yeah. You didn’t tell me about it at first, though, remember? I found it in the dresser.”

“Well, he had another one yesterday, in his arm sling.”

“So?”

“This knife was just as sharp as the first one.”

She shook her head. “Kevin, you’re insane.”

“Why’s that?”

“Every time we see this kid he’s lying helpless on his back in the sand.

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