RULES: a HAM novel by Dustin Stevens

Author:Dustin Stevens [Stevens, Dustin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-03-07T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-Six

Urges fill Solomon Hill to the point that it’s all he can do to sit still. They arrive at random moments, hitting from odd angles, each feeling more pressing than the one before.

All of them feel important, spurring him to get moving. To climb out of the damn wheelchair that has been his confinement for the past eight years and sprint out into the night.

To be doing anything but what he is, which is basically nothing. An unending game of trying to keep his hands busy and his mind occupied. Waiting for phone calls that aren’t coming. Scrolling the news in fear of what he might find.

For over twenty-five years, Hill worked in law enforcement. More than just a living, it not only came to define him, it became him.

It was the reason he never got married or had children of his own, the thought of subjecting others in this world to the horrors he’d seen too much to even consider. The same reason he never so much as even had a pet, always believing that one day he would leave for work and not return, subjecting it to a slow and torturous death by starvation.

Two and a half solid decades he lived with the police scanner by the bed. Volume up high, almost every night was spent in a state of half dress. A position that meant he was never more than a few minutes from out the door.

Off into the night, ready to face down whatever depravity was waiting for him.

Making the transition to what he is now that much more brutal.

A man left behind, alone with his urges. Like the urge to call Ham and get an update, offer his assistance, make sure everything is okay. The urge to reach out to Juana Bates and implore her to again consider leaving town for a while.

The urge to consult his former colleagues. To get in the car and go trolling Bret Alves’s old haunts.

To do something, anything, besides merely sitting in his trailer, hoping for the opportunity to feel useful.

An opportunity that thus far has only presented itself in the form of calling Deron Bates. Using subterfuge to lie to a good man in the name of finding out what time his wife got off work.

Nothing more than a ruse. The kind of thing he once looked down upon.

Letting out a sigh of frustration, Hill nudges his wheelchair forward a couple of inches. Rolling up flush with the edge of the table his computer rests on, he reaches out and grabs the plain brown folder spread before him. The centerpiece for the mass of paper that covers much of the room, the originals to the copy that he handed over to Ham just one day earlier.

A passage of time that seems completely impossible, every hour since then spent with hands clenched and heart rate elevated, adrenaline surging through him.

Dropping the folder down into his lap, he flips back the cover sheet. A standard entry form for a case file, it is one of just a few he managed to pilfer from the department years before.

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