BooksBarbecue
Back Parting Shot Save as PDF
Chapters (68)
  1. Dedication
  2. Title Page
  3. Contents
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Thirteen
  16. Fourteen
  17. Fifteen
  18. Sixteen
  19. Seventeen
  20. Eighteen
  21. Nineteen
  22. Twenty
  23. Twenty-One
  24. Twenty-Two
  25. Twenty-Three
  26. Twenty-Four
  27. Twenty-Five
  28. Twenty-Six
  29. Twenty-Seven
  30. Twenty-Eight
  31. Twenty-Nine
  32. Thirty
  33. Thirty-One
  34. Thirty-Two
  35. Thirty-Three
  36. Thirty-Four
  37. Thirty-Five
  38. Thirty-Six
  39. Thirty-Seven
  40. Thirty-Eight
  41. Thirty-Nine
  42. Forty
  43. Forty-One
  44. Forty-Two
  45. Forty-Three
  46. Forty-Four
  47. Forty-Five
  48. Forty-Six
  49. Forty-Seven
  50. Forty-Eight
  51. Forty-Nine
  52. Fifty
  53. Fifty-One
  54. Fifty-Two
  55. Fifty-Three
  56. Fifty-Four
  57. Fifty-Five
  58. Fifty-Six
  59. Fifty-Seven
  60. Fifty-Eight
  61. Fifty-Nine
  62. Sixty
  63. Sixty-One
  64. Sixty-Two
  65. Sixty-Three
  66. Sixty-Four
  67. Sixty-Five
  68. Copyright

“Don’t you want to know how I found you?” Pierce offered him half a smile with his grotesque, partially eaten face. “It was actually so fucking easy.”

“I . . . I . . .”

“It was revenge. Revenge with a J. Your clever little signature on the Just Deserts posting. I mean, you can’t spell worth a shit, but that was deliberate, right? Thing is, if the only place you’d ever used it was on that site, you’d have been fine. But I did a search, found you’d used it on other sites. With your real name attached. Looked you up, found you lived right in my own backyard.”

“Please, you’ve made a mistake.”

“Drove by your house, kept watch on you, stuck a little tracker to your van. You’ve been hunting that Pilford kid, haven’t you? He was next on your list.”

“I need a doctor,” Cory said, starting to cry. “Please, please get me some help.”

Craig clucked his tongue sympathetically. “Is it all hurty?”

“Everything . . . It all went wrong,” Cory said, a bloody tear running down his cheek. “It’s not fair. It’s not fair.”

“Ahh, who’s the big baby now?” Pierce asked, wrapping both hands around the poker and driving it straight down, like a spear, through Cory Calder’s heart.

Sixty-Two

SIXTY-TWO

CAL

I let Jeremy sleep on the way back.

He nodded off next to me a couple of miles out of Sandwich, even before we went over the Sagamore Bridge. There was a McDonald’s on the other side. I did the drive-through and grabbed coffee and a couple of breakfast sandwiches. Jeremy woke up long enough to wolf one down, then went back to sleep. We’d never gotten to bed the night before, and what with all the commotion that followed, there’d been no opportunity to nod off.

I hadn’t had a chance yet, but I was far from sleepy.

I was anxious to get going. I had an appointment to keep with the man who’d answered Kiln’s phone, and I was going to have to drive flat out to get back to Promise Falls in time to keep it.

A lot had happened since the phone call.

First, there’d been that woman running up the road, who turned out to be Carol Beakman. As soon as she told me her name, I recognized it from my chat with Barry Duckworth. She told me she had been kidnapped by Cory Calder but had managed to free herself while he was out of the cabin. She’d wandered up North Shore in the other direction, banging on doors, failing to find anyone home. Then, when she saw all the commotion at the other end of the road—fire trucks and ambulances and police cars—she started running that way.