Thriller 2: Stories You Just Can't Put Down. Литагент HarperCollins USD

where they passed through the LED beam—couldn’t see the man behind the light, but the sheriff’s eyes were hard and kind. He could tell this even though they lived in the shadow of a Stetson.

      The sheriff said, “I don’t see the boy, Wade. Mitchell, let me see those hands.”

      Mitchell took a deep, trembling breath.

      “Come on, Mitch, let me see your hands.”

      Mitchell shook his head.

      “Goddamn, son, I won’t tell you—”

      Mitchell swung his right arm behind his back, his fingers wrapping around the remote control jammed down his boxer shorts, the room fired into blue by the illumination of the television, the laugh track to Seinfeld blaring, Wade screaming the sheriff’s name as a greater light bloomed beside the lesser.

      Sheriff James flicked the light, felt the breath leave him as he blinked through the tears.

      He leaned the shotgun against the wall and stepped inside the bathroom.

      The cheap fiberglass of the tub had been lined with blankets and pillows, and the little boy was sitting up staring at the sheriff, orange earplugs protruding from his ears.

      The sheriff knelt down, smiled at the boy, pulled out the earplugs.

      “You okay, Joel?”

      The boy said, “A noise woke me up.”

      “Did he make you sleep in here?”

      “Mitchell said if I was a good boy and kept my earplugs in and stayed in here all night, I could see my daddy in the morning.”

      “He did, huh?”

      “Where’s my daddy?”

      “Down in the parking lot. We’ll take you to him, but I need to ask you something first.” The sheriff sat down on the cracked linoleum tile. “Did Mitchell hurt you?”

      “No.”

      “He didn’t touch you anywhere private or make you touch him?”

      “No, we just sat on the bed and watched about spiders and stuff.”

      “You mean, on the TV?”

      “Yeah.”

      “What’s that?” The sheriff pointed to the notebook sitting on a pillow under the faucet.

      “Mitchell said to give this to the people who came to get me.”

      Wade walked into the bathroom, stood behind the sheriff as he lifted the spiral-bound notebook and opened the red cover to a page of handwriting in black ink.

      “What is it?” Wade asked.

      “It’s to his wife.”

      “What’s it say?”

      The sheriff closed the notebook. “I believe that’s some of her business.” He stood, faced his deputy, snow melting off his Stetson. “Get this boy wrapped up in some blankets and bring him down to his dad. I gotta go call Lisa Griggs.”

      “Will do.”

      “And, Wade?”

      “Yeah?”

      “You throw a blanket over Mr. Griggs before you bring Joel out. Don’t want so much as a strand of hair visible. Shield the boy’s eyes if you have to, maybe even turn the lights out when you carry him through the room.”

      The deputy shook his head. “What the hell was wrong with this man?”

      “You got kids yet, Wade?”

      “You know I don’t.”

      “Well, just a heads-up—if you ever do, this is how much they make you love them.”

      Chapter Five

      Harry Hunsicker

      Harry Hunsicker seems to know an awful lot about taking that short step from respectable citizen to flat-out criminal. His award-winning series featuring investigator Lee Henry Oswald is a high-octane tour of the seedier side of Dallas. His story “Iced” has that same feeling of a world turned upside down. The lead characters bear a shocking resemblance to people we might know—even to ourselves—pillars of society crumbling in an avalanche of bad decisions that seemed perfectly rational at the time. All you can do as a reader is hang on and hope, against all odds, someone makes it out alive.

      Chapter Six

      Iced

      Bijoux Watson’s body slipped underneath the muddy waters of the Brazos River without a sound, a mangled pile of flesh that had once been the biggest purveyor of black tar heroin in all of east Texas.

      Chrissie and Tom watched it float downstream, both breathing heavily after dragging the remains to the edge of the water. After a few moments the corpse rounded a bend and disappeared. Chrissie and Tom looked at each other and smiled.

      Then they screwed, right there in the mud and gunk, tossing their clothes aside in a tangled heap, their bodies sweaty. Tom felt the crystal meth they’d smoked an hour before course through his limbs like a bolt of sunlight, his groin jonesing for Chrissie and her tight body.

      Bijoux was finally dead.

      When they finished, they lay side by side on the dirt and listened to the cattle egrets trill overhead and the traffic lumber across the bridge going to Bryan/College Station. The air smelled of water and decaying vegetation and sex.

      Chrissie dug a rumpled pack of Virginia Slims from the pocket of her denim skirt. She lit one and blew a plume of smoke skyward.

      “I love you.” Tom ran his index finger in a circular pattern around one of her breasts.

      She sighed and pitched her cigarette in the river. “Daddy always said don’t get lovin’ confused with screwing.”

      Tom felt needles cartwheel across his intestines as the last of the meth ricocheted across his battered synapses. He tried to remember what sleep was like.

      “But, baby. You said—”

      “Bijoux’s gone.” Chrissie stood and brushed the leaves and dirt from her body. “Things’re different now.”

      Tom tried not to cry as she dressed, an enormous fatigue making his limbs as heavy and stiff as tree trunks. His skin hurt and his vision turned black at the edges.

      Chrissie buttoned her skirt and tramped up the muddy slope without a word.

      

      He lay there for a few moments, thinking about Chrissie and the way she contorted her face when she had an orgasm, the sinews and tendons in her neck and how they came to the surface of her silky skin. He thought about doing her again and about the last hit of Ice, the crystalized amphetamine, in his briefcase in the car.

      Tom scrambled into his clothes and ran after her.

      Two minutes later he stepped off the path and onto the asphalt parking lot near the boat landing on the east side of the river. Bijoux Watson’s lemon-yellow Jaguar was the only car visible.

      Chrissie stood by the front passenger door with her arms crossed, staring intently at the smudged and cracked windshield.

      Tom walked over and stood next to her.

      Explosive residue, blood and liquified body parts coated the inside of the glass.

      Bijoux had been in the driver’s seat, a two-kilo package of what he thought was Mexican skag sitting between his legs, when Tom pressed the button, detonating the ten blasting caps nestled in the bag of Piggly Wiggly brown sugar. He and Chrissie had been thirty yards away, underneath a live oak tree with their cigarettes. Bijoux, a loan shark, pimp and dope dealer, was a rabid antismoker.

      Tom said, “Guess we didn’t think this through.”

      “No