Read Online Those Who Wish Me Dead by Michael Koryta - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Michael Koryta
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they think it’ll be a busy season. Lately the winds have been up. Trust me, you’ll feel that. This thing seems solid until the wind starts to blow. Then it’ll sway on you pretty good. So if the weather keeps on like this? Yeah, it’ll be busy. Supposed to be a run of storms early next week. If those develop, it could be trouble.”
He was right. You would think rain would help, but thunderstorms were trouble. They were sitting on top of the world here. Lightning didn’t have to travel all that far to make contact. And when it made contact with dry timber…
“Could be a busy summer,” Hannah said. Her heart was beginning to hammer now. He was standing too close to her, making the small room feel smaller. She wet her lips and took a step back. “Listen, I don’t want to be rude, but I’ve had a long walk out here and—”
“You want me out?”
“No, I’m just saying…I’m good here. I understand it, you know? And I’m tired.”
“Okay,” he said. “Guess I’ll get on the trail, then. You’re sure I didn’t rush you too much? I was supposed to show you all of the—”
“I’ll figure it out. And I love it up here already.”
He gave a wry smile. “Get through a night before you say that, okay?”
She ignored that and returned to the Osborne, peered through the gun sight and, because there was no smoke on the peaks, located the group of hikers once again. She watched them plod along and she pretended that they were fire.
8
C onnor Reynolds was a different kid than Jace Wilson, and as the days passed, that began to take on a certain appeal.
The kid he had to pretend to be now was the kind of kid he’d always wanted to be. Tough, for one. Fearless, for another. Jace had spent his life trying to be good and fearing the trouble that would follow if he slipped up. His parents had split when he was so young, he hardly remembered it. Two years later came the accident, a chain on a forklift letting go, a pallet falling, his dad earning a life of eternal pain in a few quick seconds because of somebody else’s mistake. He still had a job at the same warehouse, a foreman now, but the pain followed him and so did the mistake. His obsessiveness with procedure had seeped into Jace, who knew he came across to people as a nervous kid—double-checking locks, insisting on using seat belts in the third row of a friend’s parent’s SUV, reading the instructions on a model-plane kit five times before he even opened the bag of parts. He knew how he seemed to people. The kind word was cautious. The mean one (real one?) was scared.
But Connor Reynolds was not scared. Connor was supposed to be a bad kid. There was a kind of freedom in that. You could say what you wanted, act how you wanted. Jace tried to embrace it without pushing it. He didn’t want to draw attention, and, truth be told, he didn’t want to get his ass kicked. After the initial flare-up with Marco, Jace had kept his distance and given him enough respect to appease him, evidently. He tried to do it without showing any fear, though. Kept his sullen stares and silence. The longer he wore them, the better he felt.
He was glad to be out of the camp and on the trail too. He always felt better on the trail, felt like he was vanishing, every trace of Jace Wilson disappearing, nothing left but Connor Reynolds. Today, Ethan was telling them about bears, and everyone was listening, even the loudmouths like Marco, because all of them were scared of bears. It almost made Jace laugh. If the other boys had had any idea who might be following them, they wouldn’t have given a crap about any bears.
“When we come into a blind curve or a dark area, one of these thick stands of trees, or when we break out of them and into a meadow, we want to advertise our arrival,” Ethan was saying. “Talk a little louder, give a few claps, make your presence known by sound. They’re more eager to avoid us than we are to avoid them, believe it or not. They’ll
He was right. You would think rain would help, but thunderstorms were trouble. They were sitting on top of the world here. Lightning didn’t have to travel all that far to make contact. And when it made contact with dry timber…
“Could be a busy summer,” Hannah said. Her heart was beginning to hammer now. He was standing too close to her, making the small room feel smaller. She wet her lips and took a step back. “Listen, I don’t want to be rude, but I’ve had a long walk out here and—”
“You want me out?”
“No, I’m just saying…I’m good here. I understand it, you know? And I’m tired.”
“Okay,” he said. “Guess I’ll get on the trail, then. You’re sure I didn’t rush you too much? I was supposed to show you all of the—”
“I’ll figure it out. And I love it up here already.”
He gave a wry smile. “Get through a night before you say that, okay?”
She ignored that and returned to the Osborne, peered through the gun sight and, because there was no smoke on the peaks, located the group of hikers once again. She watched them plod along and she pretended that they were fire.
8
C onnor Reynolds was a different kid than Jace Wilson, and as the days passed, that began to take on a certain appeal.
The kid he had to pretend to be now was the kind of kid he’d always wanted to be. Tough, for one. Fearless, for another. Jace had spent his life trying to be good and fearing the trouble that would follow if he slipped up. His parents had split when he was so young, he hardly remembered it. Two years later came the accident, a chain on a forklift letting go, a pallet falling, his dad earning a life of eternal pain in a few quick seconds because of somebody else’s mistake. He still had a job at the same warehouse, a foreman now, but the pain followed him and so did the mistake. His obsessiveness with procedure had seeped into Jace, who knew he came across to people as a nervous kid—double-checking locks, insisting on using seat belts in the third row of a friend’s parent’s SUV, reading the instructions on a model-plane kit five times before he even opened the bag of parts. He knew how he seemed to people. The kind word was cautious. The mean one (real one?) was scared.
But Connor Reynolds was not scared. Connor was supposed to be a bad kid. There was a kind of freedom in that. You could say what you wanted, act how you wanted. Jace tried to embrace it without pushing it. He didn’t want to draw attention, and, truth be told, he didn’t want to get his ass kicked. After the initial flare-up with Marco, Jace had kept his distance and given him enough respect to appease him, evidently. He tried to do it without showing any fear, though. Kept his sullen stares and silence. The longer he wore them, the better he felt.
He was glad to be out of the camp and on the trail too. He always felt better on the trail, felt like he was vanishing, every trace of Jace Wilson disappearing, nothing left but Connor Reynolds. Today, Ethan was telling them about bears, and everyone was listening, even the loudmouths like Marco, because all of them were scared of bears. It almost made Jace laugh. If the other boys had had any idea who might be following them, they wouldn’t have given a crap about any bears.
“When we come into a blind curve or a dark area, one of these thick stands of trees, or when we break out of them and into a meadow, we want to advertise our arrival,” Ethan was saying. “Talk a little louder, give a few claps, make your presence known by sound. They’re more eager to avoid us than we are to avoid them, believe it or not. They’ll
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