Chapters (57)
- Cover
- Dedication
- Foreword
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Forty-Eight
- Forty-Nine
- Fifty
- Praise for Linwood Barclay
- Also by Linwood Barclay
- About the Publisher
The door burst inward, knocking Archie back into a shelf, and down onto the floor. The front of the Arrival was too wide to make it through the door, but had hit the framing around it with enough force to open it.
Pamela had been quietly waiting.
“Archie!” shouted Rory when he saw Archie on the floor and the busted door.
“It’s okay,” Archie said. “She can’t fit in.”
Pamela backed up five feet, taking part of the jamb with her, then sped forward again. The wall around the door started to crumble.
Archie scrambled to his feet.
“You sure you can’t get that back door open?”
Rory said, “Maybe there’s a key in one of the drawers at the checkout.”
Archie shot him a look. “Well, then why don’t you go out there and take a look?”
Pamela backed up and shot forward again. More of the framing around the door gave way. The Arrival had now made its way into the stockroom, almost as far as the windshield. When Pamela tried ramming her way in a fourth time, she gained another foot.
“We should have gone with Nick!” Rory said.
Rory had no idea how wrong he was.
Nineteen
Katie, her hands still firmly gripping the Cadillac’s massive steering wheel at ten and two, glanced over at Bruce at the other end of the couch-like bench seat, and asked, “So how’d you end up with this land yacht? You buy it new?”
“Just how old do you think I am?” Bruce asked.
“Well, if this came out in fifty-nine, and you were, like, twenty or something, that’d make you—hang on . . .”
“You need a calculator? Kids today can’t figure out anything in their heads. Need to press a few buttons to know the answer to anything.”
“Bite me,” Katie said. “So if you were born in 1940, you’d be nineteen, so it’s possible. What year were you born?”
“Forty-one,” he said. “And no, I did not buy it new. What eighteen-year-old kid has the money to buy a goddamn Caddy off the dealer’s lot? Car like this would have been six, seven grand.”
Katie shot him a look. “Six grand? You can’t buy a basic Hyundai for six grand.”
“Well, it was a hell of a lot of money back then.” He pointed. “Let’s take the scenic route. Make a left.”
“That’s not the way to the mall.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll get to the mall and find your baby brother. But if we take Gull Road, we can skirt around the outside of town and come at the mall from the back side. It’s a country road, hardly anyone on it, and seeing as how this land yacht, as you call it, is not supposed to be out and about during this period of grand experimentation, it’s the most circumspect way to go.”