BooksBarbecue
Back Love and Other Lies
Chapters (61)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Imagine a girl
  4. Prologue
  5. The Foreigner
  6. One
  7. Two
  8. Three
  9. Four
  10. Five
  11. The Skeptic
  12. Six
  13. Seven
  14. Eight
  15. Nine
  16. Ten
  17. Eleven
  18. Twelve
  19. Thirteen
  20. Fourteen
  21. Fifteen
  22. Sixteen
  23. Seventeen
  24. Eighteen
  25. Nineteen
  26. Twenty
  27. Twenty-One
  28. Twenty-Two
  29. Twenty-Three
  30. The Spectator
  31. Twenty-Four
  32. Twenty-Five
  33. Twenty-Six
  34. Twenty-Seven
  35. Twenty-Eight
  36. Twenty-Nine
  37. The Assassin
  38. Thirty
  39. Thirty-One
  40. Thirty-Two
  41. Thirty-Three
  42. Thirty-Four
  43. Thirty-Five
  44. Thirty-Six
  45. Thirty-Seven
  46. Thirty-Eight
  47. Thirty-Nine
  48. Forty
  49. Forty-One
  50. The Hunter
  51. Forty-Two
  52. Forty-Three
  53. Forty-Four
  54. Forty-Five
  55. Forty-Six
  56. Forty-Seven
  57. Imagine a girl
  58. Acknowledgments
  59. About the Author
  60. Also by Ben McPherson
  61. About the Publisher

She saw the smile they exchanged: confident, ready, friendly.

“Yep!”

There was nothing about them that betrayed the horror of what she had witnessed. Their eyes were bright, beady, like dogs on the chase. She could see no aggression in them, no malice. She saw the tall man take what looked like a pill, then wash it down with water from a small metal flask. The short man did the same. She heard the water in his throat as he swallowed, smelled on his breath the chewing tobacco, sickly and sweet.

The taller man took something from a pocket. Three flat metal boxes, which the short man dropped into his own pocket. Pistol magazines, like the ones in the rusted case. Then he bent down, picked up his rifle. She saw him disengage something boxy, which he handed to the short man.

“BRB, buddy.” Both men laughed. Be right back.

The tall man fitted a new magazine to his rifle, turned, walked toward the third row of cabins. She leaned forward, watched the small man as he too disappeared from sight, then crossed the path. She flattened herself against the first cabin in the third row. She heard his footsteps in the cabin, felt the slow, deliberate cruelty. But he did not fire his weapon. She heard and felt him move toward the door, forced herself forward along the side of the cheap wooden building, made herself watch him leave this cabin and enter the next.

She walked as briskly and as quietly as she could across the gap that divided the third row from the fourth. At any moment, she thought, another bullet will tear into me. A burst of bullets, and they will shatter my lungs and my heart and my liver and all that is me will end, and Christ, please, Christ . . .

The bullets did not come; the man had not seen her.

She calmed herself.

She wondered. She could save some people. Surely she could. If she tried to enter any of the cabins in the third row she risked being in direct line of sight of the gunman as he moved from building to building. But would he see her if she went to the cabins in the fourth row? How far could she get before he rounded the corner and began to move toward the lake? How many could she save?

She heard a burst of gunfire. Her courage deserted her. She had thought—hoped—that the men would run out of ammunition, that losing the rusted box would cost them, but they had bullets to spare. She was wounded and she was frightened. She needed to get to the water, and to the safety of the boat.