Parallax View - A Tracie Tanner Thriller by Allan Leverone

Author:Allan Leverone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rock Bottom Books

29

May 31, 1987

9:40 p.m.

New Haven, Connecticut

They made it as far as New Haven before stopping for the night. Shane felt almost as tired upon waking from his nap as he had before falling asleep. He offered to switch places and take a turn behind the wheel, but Tracie declined, saying, “I do some of my best thinking when I drive, and right now I have a lot to think about. Besides, we’ve gone about as far as we need to today.”

She steered the car off I-95 and then seemed to drive aimlessly around the fringes of New Haven looking for a suitable motel. She checked out three run-down establishments, all equally unappealing to Shane, eliminating all three from consideration for reasons he could not discern.

Finally she selected one. The winner in the overnight housing sweepstakes featured a central parking lot separating two rows of attached wood-frame rooms that looked like mirror images of each other, right down to the peeling paint and crumbling cement foundations.

The motel appeared identical to the other three as far as Shane could tell, and he looked at her quizzically. “This is the best we can do, huh?”

She smiled. “I’m getting a little low on cash, so we’re going to have to slum it for tonight. Once we hit the bank tomorrow, money won’t be as much of an issue, but for now I’m afraid we’ll have to pass on the Four Seasons.”

“Not to worry,” he said. “I’m a cheap date. But just out of curiosity, if we were only going to stay at a roach motel, what was wrong with the first three places you scoped out?”

“They didn’t have the features I was looking for.”

“Such as?”

“Oh, you know, a little of this, a little of that.”

“You’ve already used that answer once today.”

“I know,” she said brightly, looking like the cat that ate the canary.

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re one frustrating person to deal with?”

“All the time.”

Tracie parked the car in front of an office that looked like it had been designed by the architect who built the Bates Motel. An old-fashioned MOTEL sign hung in the front window, the glass tube letters filled with red neon gas. The “L” had burned out, leaving MOTE flickering weakly in the darkness. Above it, unlit, another sign said NEW HAVEN ARMS.

Shane looked at the “MOTE” with distaste. “I hope that’s not a warning of what’s waiting for us in the rooms.”

“Ah, come on, how bad could it be? Where’s your sense of adventure?” she said, stepping out of the car and stretching her legs. Shane reached for the door handle to join her and then stopped, admiring the view through the windshield as she reached for the sky. The night was mild and she hadn’t bothered to pull on her jacket, and her blouse lifted as she stretched, revealing a taut belly. Shane had already gotten an up-close and personal look at her legs last night while cleaning her injury, and he decided this young woman was the complete package.

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