Read Online Rebound by Michael Cain - Free Book Online

through their number in a straight line to her
objective.
    She came up behind
Mark, tossed back her hair and shot her prettiest smile at the
red-headed cocktail waitress. Shauna smiled back, and as if Liz had
commanded her to with just the power off her mind, she tapped the
still blathering Mark on the forearm and pointed behind him.
    He swung around, his
face alight with happiness, his cheeks flushed like a Campbell’s
Soup Kid--until his alcohol-hazed mind caught up with his radically
changed reality. But by then, it was too late. Liz had smiled
beautifully, had said his name as if she were greeting a long lost
best friend, and grabbed him by the shoulders, using his own bulk
as leverage, and planted her knee in his groin with a sharp, Tae Bo
perfected motion. Immediately Mark’s face turned purple and his
body curled up in the fetal position on the high gloss hardwood
floor of the bar, where he unceremoniously heaved up his lunch and
all the pretentiously overpriced cognac.
    Liz waltzed
uncontested from the resort, stepped into the taxi that awaited her
at the curb, and drove off to the airport again for a quick trip
home before she headed down to Cancun. She smiled with satisfaction
as she replayed her triumph in her head, over and over and over
again.
     
    * * * *
     
    Susan never realized
how many irritating, if not downright painfully loud sounds
surrounded her, especially when she woke up. Usually those sounds
just melted together to form a complex, though ignorable, mixture.
As with most people, Susan was so used to these sounds that she
needed to employ the use of an alarm clock.
    Happily, paradise had
no screeching, ear splitting alarm clocks.
    But what paradise did
have was a multitude of sounds that, as hungover as Susan was, left
her in excruciating pain and begging the gods to kill her.
    Susan had woken
with the sound of the surf in her ears, which created a dull ache
in her head and made her stomach lurch. The wind blowing through
the palm trees, the swoosh causing painful
tingles to climb up her spine to the back of her neck, made her
shudder. And worst of all--wind chimes.
    Wind chimes are
supposed to be relaxing and peaceful, but with Susan’s hangover,
they were clanging, deafening train wrecks, and no matter how she
covered her head with the pillow, she couldn’t escape them.
    Hell
is probably polluted with wind chimes!
    Susan scrambled out
of bed and staggered to the door of her room, passing into the
living room with the blanket still wrapped around her. She
collapsed on the couch beside Kevin, and fell against him, holding
her ears.
    “Turn on the TV!” she
moaned.
    Kevin grabbed the
remote and the large screen, flat panel TV blinked to life.
    “Turn it up!” Susan
pleaded.
    Kevin complied and
Susan leaned into him more, relaxing as the easily ignored racket
of the television eradicated the deathly cacophony of the tropical
paradise. Susan couldn’t remember the last time she’d been
hungover. Probably after one of Liz’s art shows. Liz always had
great after parties, where the wine and champagne flowed into the
wee hours of the night. But whatever headaches those parties had
caused were nothing compared to the throbbing, searing pain that
now bloomed inside Susan’s skull.
    “Take me now, Lord,”
Susan cried as she pulled Kevin’s brawny arm around her head, like
a pillow, to quell paradise’s racket. She was ready.
    She could feel
Kevin’s ribs shake as he laughed. She was just about to retaliate
by jabbing him in his stomach when she felt something smooth and
cold press against her forehead. She opened her eyes and looked up.
Kevin was holding a glass of liquid to her head. Pulling it back,
she saw it was a sickly burnt orange color, and there were flecks
of black, and chunks of red and green in there.
    Kevin took his arm
back, leaving her vulnerable to the enemy sounds. “Remember my
hangover remedy from college?”
    At that moment, Susan
found remembering her own name to be