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

Joe walked around to the back of the truck, leaned up against the tailgate, and waited. Checked on Adam five minutes later. The guy was still breathing. So he went back to his spot at the back of the truck and waited a while longer.

At fifteen minutes, Adam appeared good and dead. But Joe gave it another four minutes before making the call, just to be sure.

He’d give Sandra some time. Didn’t want to move in on her right away. Let her grieve. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t be supportive in the meantime. Pop into her office, see how she was doing. Accidentally on purpose run into her at the grocery store, ask how the kids were managing.

Give it a few months. Then, hey, I’m just heading to the diner, wanna grab a sandwich? Not a date, but sort of a date. Work up to dinner, which had a more intimate subtext.

Joe had no doubt that once Sandra got over the trauma of losing Adam, he could give her a better life. But she could never know.

Never.

Brandon Kyle had to promise him that whatever evidence he had about this would be destroyed, and that whatever he knew would be forgotten. And in return, Joe would swear, should the need arise, that Ruskin took the blame for the Arrival catastrophe.

Joe was jolted out of his thoughts by a text. He looked at his phone and saw that it was from Sandra, although the caller ID was lisa carver.

Katie home. Archie at mall. Going 4 him. Injured man in Caddy on Turner Point rd. Can you help?

Jesus, was she crazy? Was she really going to ride that wobbly stolen bike to the mall? And how the hell did she think he was going to get out to Turner Point Road? How was the Garrett Island police force supposed to respond to anything?

Joe shook his head wearily, folded down the laptop screen, and decided to head back out, see what he could do.

After all, he was the chief of police.

Forty-Three

Archie didn’t want to spend the rest of his life sitting on these loading docks.

He’d gone back in search of something to eat, giving that dead butcher on the floor a wide berth. In one corner of the meat department, beyond the reach of any Arrivals still patrolling Discount Bonanza, he’d found one of those large upright ovens filled with chickens rotating on spits. He opened the door and, without actually sliding a chicken off the end, ripped one off, breaking it in half. The chicken was hot as hell, and Archie ended up tossing it from hand to hand until it cooled down some. He took it, along with a huge wad of paper napkins, and went back out onto the loading dock, hoping that maybe, just maybe, the cars had gotten bored with waiting to kill him and wandered off.