Paradise City by Mayor Archer

Author:Mayor, Archer [Mayor, Archer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: USA
ISBN: 9781250036230
Google: bnxJmUTNkScC
Amazon: 1410453677
Barnesnoble: 1410453677
Goodreads: 13538748
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2012-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“I can’t believe you almost brought Emma,” Lester said, adjusting the pack he’d slung over his shoulder.

Sammie laughed. They were both dressed in shorts and sneakers. She had her hair wrapped in a red bandanna, looked vaguely like a college student, and was carrying a camera. She waved her hand in the air. “Look around, Les. This place is beautiful, and what a view. She would’ve loved it.”

“We’re on a recon mission,” Les, the father of two teenagers, pointed out. “How do you know what might happen up there?” He indicated the white wooden building looming above them, looking like a toy house precariously abandoned on top of a pile of rocks.

“I know, I know,” Sam agreed, her mood undiminished. “She’s not here, right? I was just thinking out loud. But you have to agree. It’s a beautiful day and a hell of a view.”

He could, and did. Through the surrounding trees, the ancient glacier-carved trough of the Connecticut River Valley stretched out below them, with Northampton clustered on the far bank of the river, peaceful and picturesque.

They continued up the last few serpentine curves, left the trees behind, and, fifteen minutes later, came upon the peeling, battered, tightly shuttered old hotel.

Sammie paused like the tourist she was playing and took a picture. “Can you imagine putting this thing way up here in the 1850s? That must’ve been a trick.”

Lester stopped beside her and draped his arm across her shoulder, kissing her cheek for anyone who might be watching, although they appeared to be alone. “It is pretty neat, I gotta say.”

The building did seem to defy its setting. It so dominated the mountain’s peak, no one could even walk around it, except by either crawling under the wraparound deck or defying the barriers across the bottom of the access stairs. And even then, they would have run the risk of falling through the deck’s rotting boards. The confusion of support members made the entire structure look like an ungainly wooden locust that had picked the worst of all places to land.

Sammie moved to a nearby outcropping to admire the view, now completely unencumbered by trees. She snapped a few more shots while speaking softly into the mic by her collar. The device connected her to Joe Gunther, far downhill in a command vehicle.

“No sign of anyone. The building looks buttoned up tight. Access to the porch is nailed off and placarded.”

“Feel free to scramble around,” Joe’s voice told her in an earbud under her bandanna. “The video is coming in beautifully.”

The camera lens he was referring to was fastened like a small decorative pin to the front of her blouse.

“Hey, Les,” she called out to her colleague, who was checking out the building’s other side. “Since there’s nobody to squeal on us, you wanna break a few rules?”

He turned and pointed happily to the closed-off stairs leading up. “You mean that? Absolutely.”

Feeling like actors on a stage, before an audience they couldn’t see, they helped each other over

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