Missing - Adam Nicholls (ready player one ebook txt) 📗
- Author: Adam Nicholls
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Book online «Missing - Adam Nicholls (ready player one ebook txt) 📗». Author Adam Nicholls
“I’m not doing anything with it. It’s for you.” Mason checked the cylinder and dumped it in her hand. “If I’m not back in exactly ten minutes—”
“You’re not going in there unarmed?”
“I’m not leaving you unarmed. I’ll take my chances.”
“Mason—” Evie tried, but by then he’d already shut the door on her.
He looked up the street and stalked toward the house.
In all honesty, he had no idea what might happen when he spoke to Mrs. Wendell. If she was going to insist that her son—Marvin—didn’t still live here, he would have to leave and return later with the police and their search warrants.
Mason tried the door and waited, listening close for any signs of someone being home. Not a peep. Something isn’t right here. Careful and quiet, he snuck around the side of the house and spotted an open window. Looking both ways, he pried it open and hustled through.
A soft thud as he landed announced his presence to the household. He could hear a TV now, coming from another room. Some shouting from a talk show about who the father might be. But if the TV was on, Mason assumed someone was home to watch it.
He gently pushed open the door that led into the living room. The last time he was here, he’d been an invited guest. Now he felt less than welcome. Still, the job needed doing, so he pressed his back to the wall and crept into the living room, watching his corners.
By the time he saw the shotgun’s barrel in his face, it was too late.
“You shouldn’t have come back here,” said a red-faced Mrs. Wendell.
Mason took a step back, raising his hands. “Put the gun down.”
Mrs. Wendell looked miniscule behind the heavy, double-barreled shotgun. Small but dangerous. She twitched the end, directing him to the couch. “I won’t let you take my boy away. They already took my baby girl, but they won’t get their hands on my boy.”
Mason sat on the couch, careful not to make any sudden movements as his heart danced inside his chest. “I’m doing what has to be done. Your son is a killer, Mrs. Wendell. Protecting him will only get more children murdered. That blood will be on your hands, too.”
She lowered her eyes—but not the weapon—for a fleeting moment. “That doesn’t make it okay. I can’t be alone in this world. I won’t.”
Despite having to choose his words with care, Mason led with his emotions. “I don’t give a rat’s ass if you’re alone. Don’t you think there are more important things than your loneliness? Not two days ago, I had to look at an eight-year-old girl dangling from a curtain pole. Your son is a monster, and he needs to go to prison.”
Mrs. Wendell shook her head, refusing to let a single word sink in. “No,” she said. “You can’t take him. You won’t.”
“Then I’ll have to come back with the strength of the SFPD behind me.”
The woman stepped back too fast for it not to look aggressive. She tightened her grip on the gun. “You’re not leaving here, Mr. Black. I’m sorry, but you can’t.”
Your ten minutes are up.
Evie had every right to panic. When Mason had said, “if I’m not back in ten minutes,” she’d assumed he was making a dry and cliché joke. But those minutes slogged by while she held the revolver, and now she had to take action.
She left the car and skirted around the house, where she’d seen Mason stalk out of view not long ago. She found an open window, and she peered through.
If anything has happened to him, she thought, I’ll never forgive myself.
Stowing the revolver in her pocket, she climbed through the window, nimble as a cat. Only as she landed, her elbow caught on something solid, knocking it to the floor. Whatever it was shattered, and Evie winced while her heart stopped for a flicker of a moment.
Seeing the blinking lights of the TV in the next room and praying she hadn’t been heard, Evie pulled out the revolver once more and crept around the door.
When she saw her brother, she gasped.
Mason was sitting on the couch, talking.
Mrs. Wendell, who was threatening him with a shotgun, had her back to Evie and hadn’t noticed her arrival. Desperate not to make a sound, Evie crept up behind her and placed the revolver against the back of the woman’s head.
“Drop the gun,” she said, knowing damn well she couldn’t shoot another human being.
“Goddamnit.” Mrs. Wendell let the gun slip from her hand and fall to the ground.
Evie walked around to her brother’s side. “You okay, Mase?”
“All good, if only you’d stop calling me Mase.” He rose and took the shotgun from beside Mrs. Wendell. Although he’d had an angry old woman threatening to blast his face into pieces, he seemed totally unfazed. Unlike Evie, whose hands still shook from the tension.
“What’s the betting you don’t have a permit for this?” Mason smirked at Mrs. Wendell. “You can drop the gun now, Evie.”
Evie sighed with relief as she handed the revolver to Mason, thankful to have the thing out of her hands. “Should we call the police? Bill? Anyone?”
“Not yet,” Mason said. “First, Mrs. Wendell is going to show us to her son’s bedroom.”
Mrs. Wendell pulled a disgusted face, as if they had no right to be there. “I will not.”
“I wasn’t asking.” Mason aimed the revolver at her forehead.
Between fantasies of slicing off another child’s finger and looking at Mason Black’s expression as he realized he should have stayed away, Marvin Wendell turned the corner and spotted the car at once.
For God’s sake!
All he’d asked for was a little time to go home and collect some things, and then he could hit the road, making only one stop along the way. Now, the game had changed.
Now, he was done making threats.
Evie Black was running from the car, a pistol of some kind gripped in her hands. She was heading toward the Wendells’ house. Toward his home. Stopping him from having fun was one thing, but intruding on his privacy? Well, that was another issue entirely.
What were they doing in there? Harassing his mother? The thought made him sick. She was such a lovely woman, deep down. Sure, she’d had trouble showing it, always putting him down and making him feel as though he wasn’t good enough. But she was his mother, for crying out loud, and he loved her.
Wendell waited until Evie was out of sight, then drove the RV past the house. Now he had nowhere to go; the motel had been compromised, and it seemed as though his home was out of bounds. By now, he could have had a million dollars and been hitting the road, killing wherever—and whenever—he pleased.
Marvin had a new destination in mind, and he made his way there, grinding his teeth and trying not to scream with rage. Two can play at that game, he thought as he passed the parked Mustang.
He would be diverting from his original plan, but he could still cause some real drama for the PI. It was like severing a limb with a butter knife: messy, but not impossible.
With a smile on his face and his foot on the pedal, he headed toward Mason’s home.
They were led into a dirty attic room, and the sight was astounding.
Photographs lined the walls, pinned up with thumbtacks and tape, every wall a collage of sentimental photography. A computer sat in the corner—multiple screens, all lit up with background usage.
Mason dragged Mrs. Wendell
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