Read Online Blood on the Tracks by Barbara Nickless - Free Book Online

office. I want you to come.”
    “No.”
    “Clyde could use Rhodes’s uniform.”
    “What?”
    “To smell him out. If Rhodes slips out between the searchers, Clyde could track him from the scent of his uniform.”
    “The sheriff has K9 teams.”
    “You ever know an air scent dog good as Clyde? Or a dog as likely to stay the course?”
    “Damn it, Nik.”
    “You will make me beg, won’t you, Sydney Rose? Fine. I’m begging. We’re talking about Elise , for Christ’s sake. If Rhodes slips through this ambush, he could disappear forever into Canada. If he ends up killing himself, justice will never be served.”
    “Not our justice, maybe.”
    He inhaled, blew smoke. “There isn’t any other kind.”
    I heard a steady whop-whop high above us. I glanced up to see the police bird approaching.
    “I’m asking,” Nik said.
    “Damn it.”
    His face was made of stone. “Please.”
    A shadow moved in the trees near Rhodes’s camp. At first I thought it was Len Bandoni. Or maybe Calamity Jane going after Rhodes’s discarded food. But then I caught a flash of fair skin and the gleam of blond hair matted with blood.
    Elise.
    When you acknowledge the dead, you call them to you. I hadn’t yet figured out how to send them away. Most of us get over it ,the Marine had told me.
    I kept reminding myself of that.
    “Ah, shit.” I pushed my face into Nik’s. Clyde gave a low growl, but this time I didn’t call him off. “You have no idea what this is costing me.”
    “I think I do.”
    “No. You don’t. You have no fucking idea because you never want to hear about it. I will do this because I love you, Nik. But you have used up every single karma point you had with me. You understand?”
    “I’ll never ask you for anything else,” Nik said.
    Heat rose in my face. “Damn straight, Nikolas George Lasko. You will never ask again.”
    He blinked. “I got it, Sydney Rose.”
    I turned away so he wouldn’t see the tears burning my eyes. Something had broken between us that I wasn’t sure we could fix. The worst kind of Weight.
    I picked up Clyde’s empty water dish, locked up the Ford, and shouldered my bag.
    The chopper came straight down, dropping a path through the snow, throwing a dim gray shadow over us and the truck.
    Down by the river, Elise moved from tree to tree, drawn steadily toward her lover’s lingering aura. She looked toward me, blue eyes meeting mine beneath a veil of blood, and I turned my back on her and Nik and the whole damn world. I fisted my hands in Clyde’s leash.
    The chopper landed.

C HAPTER 5
    In modern warfare, people disappear. Not because they run off, or go native, or get taken prisoner. I don’t even mean that they’re gone because they’re dead. I mean they vanish. One second they’re right there, standing next to you, as bright and alive as they will always remain in the eyes of their parents, wives, children. Maybe they’re talking about how the Broncos just put some whup-ass on the Raiders or how they’re going to start a computer repair business when they get home or maybe just about how sweet that first post-dawn cigarette tastes and would you like one, too?
    And then they take a few steps and the bomb goes off, and when the pink mist is done soaking into the dust, all you’re left with is a single boot and the guy’s hand. Or maybe just his rucksack spewing his med pack and his lucky rabbit’s foot and his last clean pair of underwear across the field.
    And there you stand, scared all to shit and grieving like you’ve never grieved.
    But fuck if you aren’t happy, too. Because part of you is like, sweet Jesus, that could have been me.
    —Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.
    Cohen waited, arms folded and jaw tight, while I ducked against the downdraft and hoisted Clyde into the helicopter before Nik and I scrambled aboard, dropping into the forward-facing seats across from the detective.
    Cohen shook our hands briefly in turn then closed the chopper door.
    He donned