The Shadowers by Donald Hamilton

Author:Donald Hamilton [Hamilton, Donald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Thrillers, Suspense, General
ISBN: 9780857683373
Google: ebfImgEACAAJ
Publisher: Titan Books
Published: 1964-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

13

We got the job done in a small town in Alabama, the name doesn’t matter. It wasn’t the fanciest wedding I’d ever had. I went the cutaway-and-white-satin route once. To be strictly accurate, it was right after the war and I was in uniform—the first time I’d worn my soldier suit in almost four years. What I’d really been doing overseas in various other costumes was an official secret, not to be revealed to anybody, not even my bride.

I was making like an Army officer on terminal leave, therefore, but some of the other male participants wore those streamlined tailcoats, and the bridesmaids were in tulle, if I’ve got the name right. It was very formal and pretty, and everybody said the bride looked perfectly lovely, but it didn’t take. She learned a little too much about me eventually, and didn’t like what she learned; and now she’s married to a rancher in Nevada and the kids are growing up on horseback and calling him daddy. I guess he’s better daddy material than I am, at that.

Olivia and I had lunch in the town afterward so anybody who wanted to check on the ceremony would have time to do so. The meal was a silent one. I suppose we both felt awkward about our new legal relationship. Finished, we got back into the car.

It was hers, a little foreign job with the engine behind. I guess she’d felt Volkswagens were getting too commonplace with the intellectual crowd; she’d got herself a French Renault, plain black with gray vinyl upholstery and all of thirty-two horsepower working through a three-speed shift, which isn’t enough gears to get real efficiency out of so small a mill. I got behind the wheel, started the machinery stirring in back and drove away, watching the mirror.

It was a waste of time. Nothing showed but the ordinary southern small-town traffic. Nothing followed us away from there except a Ford pickup with Alabama plates, which turned off onto a dirt road after a couple of miles.

“It still looks like a water haul,” I reported at last.

“What?”

“A country colloquialism, Mrs. Corcoran,” I said. “That’s what you say when you’ve come a long way for very little. Not that I’m running down the holy state of matrimony, you understand.”

She smiled, and stopped smiling, and looked thoughtful. “Could Kroch just be giving us rope, so to speak, counting on picking us up in Pensacola?”

“Why should he think I’d take you home to Pensacola where your friends and colleagues are? As of this morning, he had no reason to believe my intentions were honorable. Having softened up the lady, wouldn’t I be much more likely to take her to a lonely love nest by the seashore?” I shook my head ruefully. “If he’s our man, he ought to be sticking with you. If he doesn’t show, we’ve figured wrong somewhere.”

“But if he isn’t our man, why was he hiding in my room?” Olivia protested. “It doesn’t make sense.

“If he is our man, why was he hiding in your room?” I countered.

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.