Read Online Prey of Desire by J. C. Gatlin - Free Book Online Page B

speakers.
    Kim moved
over to the bed and sat down beside him on the edge. Leaning toward him, she
wrapped her arms around his frail shoulder and put her cheek next to his. “Life
doesn’t get any easier,” she whispered. “We just get stronger.”
    She
squeezed him as they watched the show. Lucy mistakenly thinks Ethel is the
female bank robber she just heard about on the news, and hatches a plot to
catch her in the act. Watching, Kim laughed.
    For the
first time in a while, she felt warm inside. She felt like the little girl who
would climb in her Grampa’s lap when he was trying to
read the newspaper, and he would turn on old reruns to appease her and she
would curl up beside him, and they would laugh together.
    Glancing
at her grandfather, now a thin, wisp of an aged, fragile shell lying in bed,
she noticed something else. Something she hadn’t seen in a long time. Her
grandfather was laughing too.
    A little
over an hour and three episodes later, Kim left the nursing home. She had to
stop at the grocery store and was away longer than expected. Still, despite the
time and the heavy bag of groceries in her arms, Kim took the long way home.
    She
walked along Morris Munger Road.
    Coming to
the sharp bend, she set her bag of groceries down on the shoulder. Noticing an
ant hill, she decided to move the grocery bag, then ran along the side of the road to the weathered real estate sign. She searched
around it, and then a few feet further away.
    Cars
whizzed past her on the street, and Kim laughed at herself. She had walked
along this shoulder so many times over the last few weeks, searching this area
time and time again, that she imagined getting struck by a hit and run and
dying right here on the road. She would probably become a tormented ghost, she
thought, roaming this haunted highway, searching for an eternity. Never finding
it, but always looking. Kim shuddered at the thought as darkness encroached. It
was time to give up for the day, and go home.
    When she
finally made it back to the gated community and approached her townhome, she
saw Zeus’ arrow-shaped head staring at her through the front bay window. His
ears pointed, his paws on the glass, he was waiting like a sentinel and barked
as she approached the front door. Yelling at him to pipe down and fishing for
her keys, she removed a flyer rubber- banned to the
doorknob. It was from a cheap Chinese dive around the corner. Tossing it into
the bag on top a loaf of bread, she unlocked the door and Zeus greeted her as
if she had been gone a year.
    Or at
least five weeks, one day and fifteen hours

 
 
     

 
    * * * * *
* *

 
 
    Next door,
inside Mallory's dark townhome, a man stood at the upstairs window, watching.
He had been waiting for Kimberly to walk through the gated entry. When she did,
he studied her approach. She walked slowly past the front gates and parking lot
with school books and a bag of groceries in her arms.
    He
wondered if the poetry book he'd given her was among them.
    Balancing
the books and groceries in one arm, her other arm disappeared into the purse
strapped around her right shoulder. He knew she was fumbling for her keys.
There was a matching set hanging on the key-hook downstairs by Mallory's front
door.
    The
thought made him smile as he watched Kim finally pull her key chain from the
purse and then reposition the grocery bag and school books. With so much fuss, she
headed to the porch and approached her front door. She yelled something to her
dog, something he couldn't hear from his perch above. But he could imagine what
she was saying.
    He shut
his eyes. “If you forget me,” he said. “There is something I want you to know.”
     

 
    * * * * *
* *

 
    Zeus
whimpered as Kim set down her school books and took the bag of groceries into
the kitchen. He came trotting after her, holding his thin leather leash in his
mouth.
    “I know.
I know.” She took the leash and wrapped the collar around his neck. “I've been
gone all