Read Online Peak Road - A Short Thriller (Jon Stanton Mysteries Book 10) by Victor Methos - Free Book Online Page B

some girl we both knew, and we heard something.” He swallowed. “It sounded like a howl. We have coyotes here, so I didn’t think anything of it. Then I heard it again—closer. And I’ve heard coyotes, and that wasn’t a coyote.
    “Just past us was the forest. We were camped out in a clearing, and we kept hearing the howls until they were right there. Then the thing growled at us. Travis grabbed the rifle, but we didn’t see anything. We just heard growling all night from the forest. Neither one of us slept. About two in the morning, I was dozing off, and in the trees, I saw it. It was watching us. Crouched down… it was just watching.” He tapped his finger against the table. “I haven’t gone into the woods at night since.”
    Mickey said, “Could it have been a wolf or bear?”
    “No. It was crouched, like it walked on two legs. It wasn’t a wolf, or a bear.”
    “Did you ever see it again?”
    He shook his head. “No. Like I said, I don’t go into the forests anymore. But when the Noels were killed… I thought maybe that’s what it was. In the photo in the paper, they were torn apart.” He looked from me to Mickey and back again. “I don’t know what I saw. But I know for sure it wasn’t a wolf, and it wasn’t a man.”
     
     
    Jennifer was working, and after sitting us at a table near the counter, she brought out coffee and orange juice. We hadn’t eaten breakfast, and after spending a solid hour with Trent, going over everyone in the town we might need to speak with, I was hungry. I took a sip of the juice as Mickey drank his coffee and stared out the windows.
    “I think she likes you,” he said.
    “It’d be more appropriate for her to date my son in high school.”
    “Does age really matter that much?”
    “Would you be with a nineteen-year-old?”
    “My grandfather once told me that you only get a few women that you love in your life. You don’t get to choose them—they’re already chosen for you. The trick is to recognize them and then hang on to them. Ruth was my first, and Camille is my third.”
    “Who was the second?”
    He grinned as he took another sip of coffee. “Gillian Hanks.”
    “The director of Behavioral Science?”
    He nodded.
    “I’ve never met her,” I said.
    “She reminds me a lot of you. Laser focus when she’s in an investigation. She’s an administrator in Washington now, but we still talk occasionally. She has a doctorate in psychology, too.”
    “Why isn’t she Mrs. Mickey Parsons?”
    “It didn’t work out between us. Neither one of us recognized what we had, and by the time we did, it was too late. We’d moved on. I was back from Vietnam only six years, still unable to really get a solid footing. I’ve been thinking about her a lot since we’ve been out here.”
    I saw Jennifer smile and wink at me. I grinned and turned back to Mickey. “Why?”
    “She was about as analytical a person as I’ve ever met. In college, she actually started a skeptics magazine debunking the paranormal and fringe-science claims. But our last conversation a few months ago was different.” He paused. “She told me psychic phenomena were real.”
    “Why does she think that?”
    “They had a psychic consultant on that Blood Dahlia case last year.”
    “I remember reading something about that online. I thought the Bureau must’ve been pretty desperate to bring in a psychic.”
    “That’s what I thought, too. But Gillian says the girl proved herself. Sarah King. Gillian thinks I should meet her for some reason.”
    “And you’ve been thinking about Sarah because you’re wondering if maybe there’s some truth to werewolves.”
    He hesitated. “I’m thinking about clinical lycanthropy. What do you know about it?”
    “There’s some suggestion that King Nebuchadnezzar’s behavior in the Book of Daniel was actually a manifestation of clinical lycanthropy. It’s been recognized for thousands of years. It’s a type of psychosis. Many sufferers don’t