Nickel City Storm Warning (Gideon Rimes Book 3) by Gary Ross (100 best novels of all time txt) 📗

back there, where they have the kiddie paddle boats? It’s used for ice skating. Of course, the children’s museum is open all year.”

“I’d like to visit that one, if there’s time.”

“Of course.”

In my vest and jacket, I was grateful for whatever wind rolled off the water. The sight of decorative banners along the railing snapping in the breeze had a placebo effect, making me feel cooler even though sweat soaked through my shirt.

The last one to finish her food, Drea took a final swig from her Coke can and dropped it in a receptacle. Then she moved to the railing across the water from grain elevators used for nighttime laser light shows. She rested her forearms on the top. “You know, sometimes it’s hard to remember there’s joy in this world and real beauty.”

As we positioned ourselves around them, Sam stood beside her. “Long as you’re in it, the world is still gonna have some beauty. And a whole lot of brains. You were always the pride and joy of the Wingard clan, baby girl.”

Drea laughed and turned to him. “Baby girl. You haven’t called me that since I was a kid and you took me to playgrounds and movies.”

“Because of my old man,” Sam said. “He used to drill it into my head it was my responsibility to look after his brother’s baby girl every time she was with me. Family was love, he used to say, and love meant protection, especially for those who would do the family proud. So I had to do whatever was necessary to keep you safe. He was always real serious about that.”

Drea nodded. “Uncle George came from a serious time. I guess family was the upside he needed to keep on keeping on.” She turned back to the river. “Now you’re still trying to protect me. Hiring a private guy who puts the coverage I usually get to shame.”

“Yeah, that crazy boy’s got the hotel room looking like something out of a movie.”

“You know I can hear you, Sam,” I said.

“You’re good crazy, G. Good crazy. But, man, it feels like you dropped us inside Mission Impossible.”

“Except Tom Cruise never gets tired,” Drea said. “I’m ready to head back now so I can take a rest before tonight.” She turned away from the railing and came to me. Gently, she clasped my forearm. “Thank you, G, for accepting this mission.”

Excerpt Four

From In the Mouth of the Wolf by Drea Wingard, with Grant Gibbons (4)

After four sessions with Dr. Clay, you discard the notion of buying another gun, of tracking down Wally Ray Tucker and putting a bullet in his forehead. Even as the investigation leads nowhere, you have begun to imagine other means of destroying Liberty Storm—maybe giving enough interviews to become the public face of opposition to the alt-right, maybe testifying in Congress, if not in a trial. But first, you must regain control of who and what you are.

Calm, kind, and insightful, Dr. Clay has listened to your recollections of thirty-plus years with Grant and your pride in and love for Miranda. When you wander too far afield in the past as if avoiding present pain and future fear, he steers you, ever so gently, back to matters at hand—your still acute loss, the clothes you step inside Grant’s closet to inhale, other decisions you have yet to make, the unforged path that lies ahead. When periodic anger at investigators increases your heart rate and speaking speed, he helps slow you down with a sympathetic look, a comment that reflects your feelings, or guiding you through the deep breathing technique he has taught you. The day you tell him you tried to shoot yourself with the gun now in his office safe, he nods as if he has known all along.

“You needed a little time,” he says later. “Every hour, every day, every week you hold off doing something hurtful, the better your chances of not doing it at all.”

“But I can always get another gun,” you blurt out.

“Not Grant’s gun,” he says

You think about that for a long time.

At the start of your sixth visit, you begin by asking Dr. Clay if he has any idea why you chose him as your therapist.

“Usually insurance or blind referral,” he says. “My assistant handles all that so I’m not influenced in our sessions by who or what brought you to me.”

“Then I won’t say who it was, but I got a list of ten possibilities and I researched all of them.”

“I’d expect nothing less from someone who knows her way around the Library of Congress.” He offers one of his rare flickers of a smile.

“Do you know why I chose you and not a woman or a black person?”

“No, but why is unimportant if we—”

“It’s important to me,” you say, interrupting him for the first time and pausing for a sharp reaction that doesn’t come. “I want you to understand.”

“I would like to understand.”

“Our professional and social circles,” you begin. “Grant and I had so many friends from so many different backgrounds, so many different walks of life. You see, I had just about forgotten—” You hesitate before continuing but the guarded honesty with which you started therapy has in the past several weeks begun to give way to an unconditional honesty that is both surprising and liberating. “Please understand I was brought up in Buffalo by parents and grandparents from the Deep South who couldn’t bring themselves to trust white people.”

“Mistrust no doubt born of experience,” he says.

“Yes, but getting scholarships to a girls’ prep school and then Columbia opened my eyes to a more educated, more cosmopolitan world than my family knew in the early and mid-Twentieth Century. Grant and I knew and liked, and in a few cases loved, men and women of various races, nationalities, occupations, faiths, sexualities, and even political persuasions. It’s not that I forgot hatred exists but I was too comfortable in my environment. What I had forgot was that hate could