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
Joe aimed for the center of the car. Right below the windshield, dead center. Maybe, just maybe, he’d disable some of the electronics built into the dashboard.
His first shot went right where he wanted it to, but the car kept coming. He fired one more round, shattering the Arrival’s windshield, before leaping into a flower garden that ran up alongside the driveway. The car whipped by. As he hit the dirt, crushing some begonias, he spun around and got off two more shots, one going into the side door and one through the rear windshield.
The car got halfway into the street before it stopped.
Slowly, Joe got to his feet and approached the Arrival from what would be, in a normal car with a normal driver, the blind spot. As he got closer, he noticed the blood trail the car had left behind in its path.
“Oh, shit,” Joe said, understanding that while his mother had managed to avoid getting killed by the Arrival, someone else had not been so fortunate.
The car’s dash was sparking and crackling. One of Joe’s shots had, indeed, clipped some circuitry. The evidence suggested the car was dead.
Joe ran back up the driveway, jumped over the mangled wheelchair on the ramp, and knelt down next to his mother sprawled out on the porch.
“You okay?” he asked breathlessly.
“Nice shootin’,” Lillian said.
Twenty-Six
“Who were you talking to?” Sandra asked Albert Ruskin, having cornered him in the men’s room of the community center. She’d backed him up to the wall, next to a urinal, her face no more than six inches from his. She was practically daring him to push her out of his way.
I was a biker babe back in the day, you motherfucker, she thought. You’re lucky I don’t have a tire iron in my hand.
“None of your business,” he said, although his voice lacked confidence.
“I’ll let you in on a secret,” Sandra said. “Everything that’s going on right now is my business. Me and the rest of the people on this island. We didn’t just turn our cars over to you. We’ve turned over our lives. That fireman who got crushed? I was too far away to see who it was. But I’m willing to bet if I don’t know him personally, I’ve sat next to him at the coffee shop, been in line with him at the Safeway getting groceries. He probably helped put out the grass fire on our street last year. So ‘none of your business’ is not going to fucking cut it.”
Droplets of sweat appeared on Ruskin’s forehead.