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

Calls followed. Hey, let’s have a drink, maybe catch a movie. Both women had agreed to go out with him, once or twice—he did have a certain charm about him—but neither wanted to continue a relationship, and both made that clear. The guy came on too strong, they’d both felt. Tried too hard. In each case, two dates in, he’d be talking about them moving in together, making a life for themselves.

They didn’t just want to slow the merry-go-round down. They wanted to get off the ride altogether.

But Joe wasn’t very good at taking the hint. He’d been so nice to them. He’d been so attentive. He’d meet them when they finished work, hang around their places of residence, call them in the middle of the night to make sure they were okay, bombard them with emails to tell them how much he cared about them.

If they changed their email addresses, he’d leave notes on their windshields.

Over a period of six months, the two women came in to speak with Joe’s superiors. The man, they said, was a stalker.

There was a quiet investigation. Joe Bridgeman’s superiors put him on notice. If he pulled this kind of shit again, he’d be out on his ass. But Joe knew that even if he behaved himself going forward, he was never moving ahead with this department. Not with those complaints in his file.

When the opening for a Garrett Island police chief came up, it was kismet. He already made regular trips there to check in on his mother, whose health was in decline. He knew many of the people who’d make the decision about hiring him. Had grown up with them. He could move back into the house he’d been raised in, look after his mom, and start a new job with more prestige and responsibility than the one he’d left.

A new beginning.

But what if the town’s elders, and those who’d hired him, learned about his past? What if they knew what Kyle had uncovered?

So when Kyle sought a meeting with Joe, a month before the Arrival event, he laid it all out. Download onto a stick the data from Lisa’s computer and put it in the media kit for one Ben Stapleton. Spike Carver’s coffee, giving Joe time to do what he had to do.

The audacity of the proposal stunned Joe. “No,” he said. “I couldn’t do such a thing.”

Which was when Kyle told him what he knew. The complaints against him. How would the Garrett Island council—and this widow he was so interested in—react to that information?