Read Online Left Behind: A Novel Of Earth's Last Days by Tim Lahaye, Jerry B. Jenkins - Free Book Online Page B

what could I do for you if I could do anything?”
    “Here’s the thing,” Buck said. “I have to get to New York. Now don’t give me that look. I know it’s the worst place to try to get to right now. But you know people. You know pilots who fly on the side, charter stuff. You know what airports they would fly out of. Let’s say I had unlimited resources and could pay whatever I needed to. Who would you send me to?”
    She stared at him. “I can’t believe you asked me that.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I do know someone. He flies these little lets out of like Waukegan and Palwaukee airports. He’s expensive and he’s the type who would charge double during a crisis, especially if he knew who you were and how desperate.”
    “There won’t be any hiding that. Give me the info.”

    Hearing it on the radio or seeing it on television was one thing. Encountering it for yourself was something else again. Rayford Steele had no idea how it would feel to find evidence that his own wife and son had vanished from the face of the earth.
    At the top of the stairs he paused by the family photos. Irene, always one for order, had hung them chronologically, beginning with his and her great grandparents. Old, cracked black and whites of stern-faced, rawboned men and women of the Midwest. Then came the faded color shots of their grandparents on their fiftieth wedding anniversaries. Then their parents, their siblings, and themselves. How long had it been since he had studied their wedding photo, her with her flip hairstyle and him with his hair over his ears and muttonchops?
    And those family pictures with Chloe eight years old, holding the baby! How grateful he was that Chloe was still here and that somehow he would connect with her! But what did this all say about the two of them? They were lost. He didn’t know what to hope and pray for. That Irene and Raymie were still here and that this was not what it appeared?
    He could wait no longer. Raymie’s door was open a crack. His alarm was beeping. Rayford turned it off. On the bed was a book Raymie had been reading. Rayford slowly pulled the blankets back to reveal Raymie’s Bulls pajama top, his underpants, and his socks. He sat on the bed and wept nearly smiling at Irene’s harping about Raymie’s not wearing socks to bed.
    He laid the clothes in a neat pile and noticed a picture of himself on the bed table. He stood smiling inside the terminal, his cap tucked under his arm, a 747 outside the window in the background. The picture was signed, “To Raymie with love, Dad.” Under that he had written, “Rayford Steele, Captain, Pan-Continental Airlines, O’Hare.” He shook his head. What kind of a dad autographs a picture for his own son?
    Rayford’s body felt like lead. It was all he could do to force himself to stand. And then he was dizzy, realizing he hadn’t eaten in hours. He slowly made his way out of Raymie’s room without looking back, and he shut the door.
    At the end of the hall he paused before the French doors that led to the master suite. What a beautiful, frilly place Irene had made it, decorated with needlepoint and country knickknacks. Had he ever told her he appreciated it? Had he ever appreciated it?
    There was no alarm to turn off here. The smell of coffee had always roused Irene. Another picture of the two of them, him looking confidently at the camera, her gazing at him. He did not deserve her. He deserved this, he knew, to be mocked by his own self-centeredness and to be stripped of the most important person in his life.
    He approached the bed, knowing what he would find. The indented pillow, the wrinkled covers. He could smell her, though he knew the bed would be cold. He carefully peeled back the blankets and sheet to reveal her locket, which carried a picture of him. Her flannel nightgown, the one he always kidded her about and which she wore only when he was not home, evidenced her now departed form.
    His throat tight, his eyes full, he noticed