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

He was unable to finish the question. Joe yanked, suddenly, on the arm Ruskin had been using to prop himself up. The man hit the floor. Quickly, Joe put his hands on the man’s head, grasping it like a melon, raised it six inches off the floor and then slammed it down on the floor.

Hard.

The sound as his skull shattered ricocheted through Joe’s gut. He didn’t know how much more of this he could take. But he was in up to his eyeballs now and he had to make sure the deed was done.

So, he placed his palm over Ruskin’s mouth, and used his thumb to pinch the man’s nose shut. He pressed and squeezed as hard as he could, and the fact that he wasn’t encountering any resistance was a good sign.

Ruskin must already be dead.

After a minute, during which he looked over his shoulder every couple of seconds in case Sandra returned, he took his hand away, stood and got himself back in the chair in front of the laptop.

Thirty-Seven

Katie had a dream.

She is with her dad, at the beach they used to go to on Cape Cod, before the family moved to Garrett Island. Her father, in a pair of bright red trunks, is running down to the incoming surf, waving at her to join him.

She was just a little kid when they went to Cape Cod, but in the dream, she is her current age. A big girl, although in the dream she has a brilliant pink plastic pail and an equally luminous green shovel, making the most rudimentary of sand castles, the kind she made when she was four or five.

“Come on!” her dad shouts, still waving, the seawater breaking around his ankles. “The water’s fine!”

Katie hears a voice. It’s her mother’s, although she doesn’t see her in the dream. She says, sternly, “Do as your father says.”

Now the water is up to her father’s knees as he continues to stride in, like a soldier intent on marching his way to Europe. So Katie gets up and runs, barefoot, toward the ocean, her feet shifting with each step on the hot sand.

“Coming, Daddy!” she cries. “I’m coming!”

But when she reaches the damp sand, where the waves have come in and retreated rhythmically, she does not see her father.

“Daddy!” she cries.

She looks left and then right. There is no one else in the water. As she glances back, she sees no one on the beach. No one is spread out on a towel. There are no umbrellas, no folding chairs. Not even her mother is there.