Read Online Dance of Death by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child
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There were sharp intakes of breath, a sudden gasp.
The figure jerked and shuddered, its back arching in agony until the victim seemed almost bent double. Sawtelle watched, transfixed with horror.
Then, suddenly, the rope parted. The man, flapping his arms and churning his legs, dropped directly toward him.
Just as suddenly, Sawtelle found he could move again. With an inarticulate cry, he threw himself backward in his chair. A split second later, there came an explosion of glass, and a shape hurtled past in a shower of glass and landed with a deafening crash on the women and their fruit salads, which disintegrated into a strange pastel eruption of reds and yellows and greens. From his position on his back on the floor, Sawtelle felt something warm and wet slap him hard across the side of the face, followed almost immediately by a shower of broken glass, dishes, cups, forks, spoons, and flowers, all raining down from the impact.
A strange silence. And then the cries began, the screams of pain, horror, and fear, but they seemed strangely soft and far away. Then he realized that his right ear was full of an unknown substance.
As he lay on his back, the full impact of what had just happened finally registered. Disbelief and horror washed over him once again. For a minute, maybe two, he found himself unable to move. The cries and shrieks grew steadily louder.
At last, with a heroic effort, he forced his unwilling limbs to respond. He rose to his knees, then staggered to his feet. Other people were now climbing to their feet, the room filling with the muffled shrieks and moans of the damned. Glass lay everywhere. The table at his right had turned into a crumpled mound of food, gore, flowers, tablecloth, napkins, and splintered wood. His own table was covered with glass. The twenty-five-dollar mound of raw hamburger was the only thing that had been spared, and it sat in solitary splendor, fresh and gleaming, all by itself.
His eyes moved to his client, who was still sitting, motionless, his suit splattered with something indescribable.
Abruptly, involuntarily, Sawtelle's limbs went into action. He swiveled about, found the door, took a step, lost his balance, recovered, took another.
The client voice followed him. "Are-are you going?"
The question was so inane, so inappropriate, that Sawtelle broke into a choking, hoarse laugh. "Going?" he repeated, clearing his ear with a tug. "Yeah. I'm going." He lurched toward the door, coughing with laughter, his feet crunching across glass and ruin, anything to get away from this terrible place. He hit the sidewalk and turned south, his walk breaking into a run, scattering pedestrians in his wake.
From now on, people would just have to come to Keokuk.
NINE
William Smithback Jr. got out of the cab, tossed a crumpled twenty through the front passenger window, and looked up Broadway toward Lincoln Center. A few blocks uptown he could make out a vast throng of people. They'd spilled out into Columbus and across 65th Street, creating one mother of a traffic jam. He could hear people leaning on their horns, the shriek of sirens, the occasional earth-shuddering blaaaat of a truck's air horn.
Smithback threaded his way through the sea of motionless vehicles, then turned north and began jogging up Broadway, his breath misting in the cold January air. It seemed he ran just about everywhere these days. Gone was the dignified, measured step of the ace New York Times reporter. Now he rushed to get his copy in on time, dashed to each new assignment, and sometimes filed two stories a day. His wife of two months, Nora Kelly, was not happy. She'd had expectations of unhurried dinners, sharing with each other the events of the day, before retiring to a night of lingering pleasure. But Smithback found he had little time for either eating or lingering. Yes, he was on the run these days: and for good reason. Bryce Harriman was running, too, and he was hard on Smithback's heels.
It had been one of the
The figure jerked and shuddered, its back arching in agony until the victim seemed almost bent double. Sawtelle watched, transfixed with horror.
Then, suddenly, the rope parted. The man, flapping his arms and churning his legs, dropped directly toward him.
Just as suddenly, Sawtelle found he could move again. With an inarticulate cry, he threw himself backward in his chair. A split second later, there came an explosion of glass, and a shape hurtled past in a shower of glass and landed with a deafening crash on the women and their fruit salads, which disintegrated into a strange pastel eruption of reds and yellows and greens. From his position on his back on the floor, Sawtelle felt something warm and wet slap him hard across the side of the face, followed almost immediately by a shower of broken glass, dishes, cups, forks, spoons, and flowers, all raining down from the impact.
A strange silence. And then the cries began, the screams of pain, horror, and fear, but they seemed strangely soft and far away. Then he realized that his right ear was full of an unknown substance.
As he lay on his back, the full impact of what had just happened finally registered. Disbelief and horror washed over him once again. For a minute, maybe two, he found himself unable to move. The cries and shrieks grew steadily louder.
At last, with a heroic effort, he forced his unwilling limbs to respond. He rose to his knees, then staggered to his feet. Other people were now climbing to their feet, the room filling with the muffled shrieks and moans of the damned. Glass lay everywhere. The table at his right had turned into a crumpled mound of food, gore, flowers, tablecloth, napkins, and splintered wood. His own table was covered with glass. The twenty-five-dollar mound of raw hamburger was the only thing that had been spared, and it sat in solitary splendor, fresh and gleaming, all by itself.
His eyes moved to his client, who was still sitting, motionless, his suit splattered with something indescribable.
Abruptly, involuntarily, Sawtelle's limbs went into action. He swiveled about, found the door, took a step, lost his balance, recovered, took another.
The client voice followed him. "Are-are you going?"
The question was so inane, so inappropriate, that Sawtelle broke into a choking, hoarse laugh. "Going?" he repeated, clearing his ear with a tug. "Yeah. I'm going." He lurched toward the door, coughing with laughter, his feet crunching across glass and ruin, anything to get away from this terrible place. He hit the sidewalk and turned south, his walk breaking into a run, scattering pedestrians in his wake.
From now on, people would just have to come to Keokuk.
NINE
William Smithback Jr. got out of the cab, tossed a crumpled twenty through the front passenger window, and looked up Broadway toward Lincoln Center. A few blocks uptown he could make out a vast throng of people. They'd spilled out into Columbus and across 65th Street, creating one mother of a traffic jam. He could hear people leaning on their horns, the shriek of sirens, the occasional earth-shuddering blaaaat of a truck's air horn.
Smithback threaded his way through the sea of motionless vehicles, then turned north and began jogging up Broadway, his breath misting in the cold January air. It seemed he ran just about everywhere these days. Gone was the dignified, measured step of the ace New York Times reporter. Now he rushed to get his copy in on time, dashed to each new assignment, and sometimes filed two stories a day. His wife of two months, Nora Kelly, was not happy. She'd had expectations of unhurried dinners, sharing with each other the events of the day, before retiring to a night of lingering pleasure. But Smithback found he had little time for either eating or lingering. Yes, he was on the run these days: and for good reason. Bryce Harriman was running, too, and he was hard on Smithback's heels.
It had been one of the
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