BooksBarbecue
Back Whistle
Chapters (73)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Prologue
  4. Part IAnnie
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Part IIHarry
  13. Eight
  14. Nine
  15. Ten
  16. Eleven
  17. Twelve
  18. Thirteen
  19. Fourteen
  20. Fifteen
  21. Sixteen
  22. Seventeen
  23. Eighteen
  24. Nineteen
  25. Twenty
  26. Twenty-One
  27. Part IIIAnnie
  28. Twenty-Two
  29. Twenty-Three
  30. Twenty-Four
  31. Twenty-Five
  32. Twenty-Six
  33. Twenty-Seven
  34. Twenty-Eight
  35. Twenty-Nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-One
  38. Thirty-Two
  39. Part IVHarry
  40. Thirty-Three
  41. Thirty-Four
  42. Thirty-Five
  43. Thirty-Six
  44. Thirty-Seven
  45. Thirty-Eight
  46. Thirty-Nine
  47. Forty
  48. Forty-One
  49. Forty-Two
  50. Forty-Three
  51. Forty-Four
  52. Forty-Five
  53. Forty-Six
  54. Forty-Seven
  55. Forty-Eight
  56. Part VAnnie
  57. Forty-Nine
  58. Fifty
  59. Fifty-One
  60. Fifty-Two
  61. Fifty-Three
  62. Fifty-Four
  63. Fifty-Five
  64. Fifty-Six
  65. Fifty-Seven
  66. Fifty-Eight
  67. Fifty-Nine
  68. Sixty
  69. Sixty-One
  70. Acknowledgments
  71. About the Author
  72. Also by Linwood Barclay
  73. About the Publisher

“Where I got the bike,” he said. “I saw some there. They were old and kind of busted and stuff, but they’d be good. I need to make the town bigger.”

“Okay, then,” Annie said. “Why don’t we go back there tomorrow. We’ll get lunch, make an afternoon of it.”

Chuffchuffchuffchuffchuff

“You know what place this is?” Charlie asked.

Annie tried to think like a child. What could a few plastic buildings represent in a kid’s imagination?

“Is that New York?”

“Nope.”

“Uh, is it the town where we got the bike? Is it Fenelon?”

“Nope.”

“I give up. You tell me.”

Charlie turned and looked at her. “This is where Daddy lives now.”

Twenty-Three

It began as an itching in her fingers.

Annie noticed it two mornings later as she was drinking her coffee. It started in her fingers and radiated up her arms and began to spread, ever so subtly, throughout her body. At first she thought it was a caffeine rush, that those coffee pods she was going through at an alarming rate were giving her the jitters, but then she recognized this feeling for what it really was.

She needed to go back to work.

Her body, as well as her subconscious, were ganging up on her, telling her it was time to stop sitting around.

It was time to create.

Annie had suspected this time might come. She was, in the very core of her being, an artist, and an artist could only put things off for so long. She had been through a period of self-recrimination over the death of Evan Corcoran, and moved on from that to an even darker period of grieving John. Not surprisingly, the so-called creative juices had not been flowing during those times, and at least she’d felt no guilt about that. It wasn’t just Pierce the Penguin who’d been put up on the shelf. Anything Annie might ever produce was up there next to him.

So when Charlie came down for breakfast the next day, she told him they’d be sharing space. He could keep on playing with his trains, but she was going to be at her worktable.

“Are you going to be drawing again?” her son asked.

“I think I might.”

Charlie looked pleased. “Are you going to draw Pierce?”

“I don’t know. I guess we’ll see. I started something the other day. I might see where that takes me.”

That, of course, had been that half-rat, half-wolf creation. She’d been thinking about him lately, wondering whether to direct her talents into this different, gloomier direction. Maybe it was something she had to get out of her system. Considering the kind of year she’d had, was it even reasonable to think that when she put pen to paper she’d draw a cheerful little penguin? She could wallow around in the dark for a while and see where it took her.