Read Online Prairie Gothic by J.M. Hayes - Free Book Online Page A

meant either. Come over here. Take a look.”
    Doc reached down and gently brushed thick black hair off the child’s forehead. There was a mark there. The sheriff bent closer.
    â€œYou see it,” Doc asked, and the sheriff did.
    In the center of his forehead, just below the hairline, someone had drawn a tiny swastika.
    ***
    The weather was deteriorating. By the time Mad Dog and Hailey got back to the Saab, all his extremities were numb. His face was raw from the stinging snow that had begun falling, driven by the wind so that it blew almost parallel to the ground. He couldn’t get a cellular signal and had to step back out of the Saab to try his phone in the open. Hailey refused to follow. If a tundra wolf preferred to snuggle near the heater vent on the seat of an aging Saab Turbo instead of sniffing about for bunnies—or more skeletons—it was definitely turning unpleasant out.
    Mad Dog finally got the phone to work. The connection was weak, but he discovered his brother’s cell phone was turned off. When he punched in the number for the sheriff’s office next, it actually rang. Of course Mrs. Kraus didn’t really answer, she just told him to hold while she dealt with something. It sounded like a madhouse there, only his signal was so poor that he couldn’t make out much. Could all that be because of Tommie Irons?
    Just as he was about to abandon hope, Mrs. Kraus came back on the line. For a moment, her voice was crystal clear. “What can I do for you?” she asked.
    Englishman wasn’t there and it was clear folks were pissed that he’d helped Tommie Irons on his journey to the Happy Hunting Grounds. Englishman needed to know what Hailey had discovered, though, so Mad Dog swallowed his pride and began trying to explain to Mrs. Kraus.
    â€œI found a body,” he told her.
    â€œMad Dog, the whole damn town knows about the body you found, and just where you found it.”
    â€œNo ma’am. I mean another. Maybe more.”
    He stomped his feet to try to get some feeling, and then there was way too much feeling on the left side of his face and when he turned to look for the phone it wasn’t there anymore, just some wires and shattered plastic hanging over his bare, bloody hand. Moments before that hand had held a cell phone and been enclosed in a thick mitten.
    Mad Dog hadn’t thought the Saab could get through the drifted snow just downhill of the slough, but it did, and faster than he would have dreamed. The plastic had nicked his hand, but it was his ear doing most of the bleeding. He couldn’t hear out of it quite right, not that he was complaining. Right now it was about putting distance between himself and the white pickup truck that had followed him down the road by the slough. If, when he found time to check, he resembled Vincent Van Gogh in the ear department, he would still count himself lucky. The shooter with the white truck had put a bullet through his phone. The Nokia was dead. He wasn’t. If the Saab proved better at negotiating snowdrifts than the shooter’s truck, he would keep it that way.
    ***
    â€œI don’t think I can do it,” Two of Two said.
    â€œSpread your legs a little. Put your left foot up there and push.”
    â€œDon’t forget to breathe,” One of Two suggested.
    â€œOK,” Wynn said, shifting his butt around nervously and wringing his hands. The deputy leaned forward and looked out the windshield, checking the street ahead. It was empty, just as it almost always was. “Your foot on the floor?”
    â€œMy left one?” Two wondered. “Yeah. Pedal’s all the way down.”
    â€œAll right, now. Take ahold of the shifter here and shove it to the left and forward so’s you’re in first gear.” Two did as instructed. “Now, gently, push your right foot down on the accelerator as you lift your other foot off the clutch.”
    â€œLike this?” The