BooksBarbecue
Back Look Both Ways
Chapters (57)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Foreword
  4. Prologue
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-One
  26. Twenty-Two
  27. Twenty-Three
  28. Twenty-Four
  29. Twenty-Five
  30. Twenty-Six
  31. Twenty-Seven
  32. Twenty-Eight
  33. Twenty-Nine
  34. Thirty
  35. Thirty-One
  36. Thirty-Two
  37. Thirty-Three
  38. Thirty-Four
  39. Thirty-Five
  40. Thirty-Six
  41. Thirty-Seven
  42. Thirty-Eight
  43. Thirty-Nine
  44. Forty
  45. Forty-One
  46. Forty-Two
  47. Forty-Three
  48. Forty-Four
  49. Forty-Five
  50. Forty-Six
  51. Forty-Seven
  52. Forty-Eight
  53. Forty-Nine
  54. Fifty
  55. Praise for Linwood Barclay
  56. Also by Linwood Barclay
  57. About the Publisher

“When they invent a face that will do its own makeup, that’s when I’ll really give a shit,” she said to the woman in the mirror.

Two

The Arrival corporation had been very strict where the media were concerned.

No one could bring a conventional vehicle onto the ferry. A paddock had been set up on the mainland for the islanders’ cars, and that was where the media vehicles would have to go, too. Reporters would walk onto the ferry, and when they got to Garrett Island, convoys of driverless Arrivals would escort them to Garrett itself, the town at the eastern end of the island where most islanders lived, for the news conference. Not surprisingly, the TV and cable news folks were not happy. They had to leave their vans, filled with gear and equipped with satellite hookups, behind.

But Arrival Inc. had made it clear bringing any conventional car or truck onto the island—a vehicle that someone actually drove—would be like performing surgery without washing your hands. A vehicle where someone sat behind the wheel and pressed on an accelerator and flicked a turn signal would be nothing short of a contamination.

The island was a pristine environment, at least where the roads were concerned.

It reminded Brandon Kyle of the time he had visited Australia to supervise the opening of the first Gandalf dealership in that country. Never before had his bags been searched after getting off the plane. The customs officials wanted to be sure he wasn’t bringing in any fruit or vegetables or plants of any kind. They even wanted to know if visitors were bringing in any animals, living or dead, which struck Kyle as an odd question until someone told him travelers had been caught trying to smuggle all sorts of things into the country—live chickens, mice, rabbits, you name it—and Australia was not messing around when it came to this. Kyle had heard about one guy who’d tried to hide a snake in his pants. A sharp-eyed airport employee became suspicious when it appeared the individual’s dick was trying to catch some air out the bottom of his trouser leg. This country, isolated from the rest of the world geographically, had been able to protect itself from foreign predators, and wanted to keep it that way.

Arrival was taking the same approach where Garrett Island was concerned.

When Kyle was able to see the docked ferry in the distance, he instructed his driver, Derek Penner, to drop him by the pedestrian ramp. There was no need for Derek to leave the Cadillac sedan in the paddock with the other vehicles. Derek wasn’t staying. He had somewhere else to be.