Inside Out. Amy Lee Burgess

Чтение книги онлайн.

      I was restless. Paddy’s profile was clear from my vantage point in the backseat of the Prelude as he slouched in the front passenger bucket. At some point, he must have given Murphy the Mac Tire pack ring, because it gleamed on the middle finger of Murphy’s right hand which I could plainly see as he gripped the steering wheel.

      We were all dressed in funereal black, and Paddy had managed to calm his wildly curly hair somehow.

      Each passing mile on the highway brought us inexorably closer to Vermont—to Maplefair’s territory in Easton.

      Part of my restlessness could be traced to that fact, but a lot of it was simply being confined in the cage of the car.

      Murphy, exquisitely attuned to my rising level of agitation as he always was when we drove together, cast me a sympathetic look in the rear-view mirror.

      “There’s a rest stop two miles ahead,” he told me. “Just over the border.”

      I gulped. The Vermont border. After we crossed, it was only another hour or so until our destination.

      Paddy checked his watch, a subtle reminder that we were due in Easton by noon, and it was already edging past eleven.

      Aside from a slight tightening of his mouth, Murphy ignored him and switched lanes to position us for the exit. Paddy sighed and slouched further into his seat.

      He’d spent the past three hours in rapt observation of the New England scenery. Not that he’d gotten much from the highway. It must have been sufficiently different from Ireland to interest him because he’d seemed mesmerized. He’d slurped Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and cursed when powdered sugar from his jelly doughnut had sprinkled across his black dress pants but, aside from that, had kept mostly quiet.

      Murphy had concentrated on driving—probably in an effort to keep my agitation at a minimum. I’d sat in the backseat and munched glazed doughnut holes and sipped French vanilla-flavored coffee. My head hurt—a stress headache combined with the knock on the head I’d received nearly a week ago. Today was Tuesday. Tomorrow would make one week since I’d woken in Grandmother Emma’s root cellar chained to a metal morgue gurney, with Bethany Dillon chained to her own gurney a feet away.

      Bethany. Her name swept a rush of guilt and hopelessness through me and I sighed.

      “Almost there, honey,” Murphy said from the front seat. He was right. The car was on the off-ramp and, a moment later, we pulled up in front of a low brick building which housed public restrooms and a small vestibule filled with racks of brochures printed by the Vermont State Department of Tourism. The door to the vestibule was chained and bolted shut, but the restrooms were open.

      The moment the car stopped, I was out the back door and onto the asphalt pavement. A caressing May breeze lifted the strands of hair around my face and blew away some of the restless tension that twisted my muscles painfully. I couldn’t bear the thought of spending even one second of the precious few minutes we’d linger here in the cramped confines of the ladies’ restroom and instead began to pace so I could feel the wind against my skin.

      I was still alive. Alive and free.

      Paddy leaned against the car and consulted his cellphone for messages. I’m pretty sure he didn’t expect to find any, but the rest stop’s scenery did not seem to enthrall him as much as the highway’s.

      Murphy watched me pace for a moment then, with a resolute shift of his shoulders, he joined me.

      He made sure not to touch me—of course he wouldn’t—but he was near enough that I was comforted. I wanted to touch him but I didn’t. My emotions were shredded.

      Fear, bottomless and dreadful, whipped through my body and snagged in my brain where it turned my thoughts into a whirling mass of fleeting impressions—the cold of the gurney against my bare skin—the stink of Bethany’s fear and unwashed, infected body. Nate’s laughter in the wood shed as I swung the wrench ineffectually at his head.

      Then the tribunal. The relentless damnation of my poor, damaged wolf.

      “God, I wish I were anywhere else but here,” I whispered. Murphy gave me a sympathetic smile.

      “Not too late to turn the car around and go back to Boston.” He was so close I smelled his cologne, but so far away he might have been on the moon.

      I wrapped my arms around myself and walked toward a chain link fence that separated the rest stop from a small stretch of pine trees. The crisp scent of evergreen was pungent in my nose and I drew deep breaths in an attempt to cleanse myself. My head hurt again and, when I touched the sort spot at the base of my skull, I winced.

      Murphy waited patiently but, after a moment, Paddy stalked over and assessed the situation.

      “She wouldn’t suffer half so much if she had the pack bond to fall back on.” Paddy glared at Murphy as if to accuse him of something. Murphy’s jaw tightened but he didn’t say anything.

      “Pack bond?” With reluctance, I turned away from the pine trees. My fingers were hooked in the spaces between the chain links so hard the wire left indentations. My brain was less fuzzy and the awful memories had retreated. For the moment, anyway.

      “That’s СКАЧАТЬ