Tracking Shot by Colin Campbell (i can read book club .txt) 📗

Susan looked at her brother but didn’t speak. McNulty became aware of the tea chests and cardboard boxes stacked in the shadows of the garage. Each box had a label pasted on one side, Kitchen, Living Room, Tilly’s Room. A house awaiting the moving truck. A life in flux. Two lives.

“It seems like the more I try to help the more I drag you down.”

Susan shook her head. “It’s not you who dragged us down. It goes back further than that.”

McNulty stood on the edge of the shadows in the garage doorway. This time it was he who couldn’t speak.

Susan unfolded her arms. “It’s the person who put us in Crag View in the first place.”

McNulty felt cold despite the July heat. “Our parents?”

“Or parent.”

“Yes. Or that.”

McNulty couldn’t bring himself to breach the barrier and Susan didn’t come out. They spoke as if an invisible force field were keeping them apart and he supposed that was true. A shared past that was different for each of them. McNulty spoke softly. “Did they ever tell you about them?”

“You were the oldest.”

McNulty snorted a laugh. “Cruckshank didn’t even tell me about you.” He shrugged. “During the adoption process? On the papers? Anything?”

“No.”

She didn’t expand on that, and McNulty didn’t press. He nodded at the house. “How is she?”

Susan glanced over her shoulder as if Tilly might be listening. “She’ll be fine.”

She looked at her brother and smiled for the first time. “We’ll be fine. The McNulty’s are a tough breed.”

McNulty smiled at his sister, knowing this was goodbye, and she finally came out of the shadows. They stood in the warm afternoon sunshine and hugged each other. It didn’t take one of them to go first; it was just a natural thing. The unspoken farewell. McNulty held her tight then stepped back. “I didn’t think you’d lose the house.”

Susan shrugged. “It was always his. With his fall comes the fallout.”

“Does she know he’s her father?”

She shook her head. “We split before she was born. His second marriage. I guess it was a father figure kind of thing,” referring to the age difference. She looked at her brother. “Sometimes it’s best not to know.”

McNulty considered the terrible things DeVries had planned for his own daughter and couldn’t have agreed more. He wondered if it was better for himself and Susan not to know who their parents were—if it was better not to know the reason they’d been abandoned at Crag View—but he couldn’t help thinking he’d like to have known. Sometimes life throws shit at you, and it isn’t always sweetness and strength, but sometimes a little sweetness does come your way.

“Come here a minute.” He led Susan to the back of the car and opened the trunk. He took a pink girl’s haversack out and gave it to his sister. “Something for the road.”

Susan looked at the bag. “She doesn’t like pink.”

McNulty nodded at the zipper. “How about green?”

Susan unzipped the bag and several tight bricks of bills almost fell out. A lot of bricks. Her mouth dropped open and tears formed in her eyes. McNulty zipped the bag shut for her. “I had to make room for the spring mount and the explosives.”

Susan gathered herself. “How much?”

McNulty shrugged. “Enough.”

Another jet took off from Logan International. The dog stopped barking but the birds kept singing. This time there was the sound of children playing two houses farther along Kirkstall Road. Maybe friends of Tilly. Maybe even Tilly playing with them. The sun was warm on McNulty’s back. He slammed the trunk and opened the driver’s door. Susan held the door open for him. “And you?”

McNulty leaned forward and kissed Susan on the forehead. “Larry reckons the publicity’s going to make this one a blockbuster.” He smiled at his sister and dangled the car keys. “Titanic Productions is going to Hollywood.”

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Once again it’s time to thank all those people who helped make this happen. Instead of the list getting shorter it just keeps getting longer, so I’ll start with the obvious. Eric Campbell and Lance Wright at Down & Out Books for continuing to have faith in me. Donna Bagdasarian for being my agent in the early days and suggesting that I set my books in America. Good call, Donna. And to the growing list of authors who have supported me along the way, including Lee Child, Reed Farrel Coleman, Nick Petrie, Chris Mooney, Andrew Grant, Bruce Coffin and Ace Atkins. I’ve saved the most important for last: you, the reader. Hopefully, more than one. Happy reading.

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Ex-army, retired cop and former scenes-of-crime officer, COLIN CAMPBELL served with the West Yorkshire police for thirty years. He is the author of the UK crime novels Blue Knight White Cross and Northern Ex, and the U.S. thrillers featuring rogue Yorkshire Cop Jim Grant.

CampbellFiction.com

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BOOKS BY COLIN CAMPBELL

The Jim Grant Thrillers

Jamaica Plain

Montecito Heights

Adobe Flats

Snake Pass

Beacon Hill

Shelter Cove

Catawba Point

A Vince McNulty Thriller

Northern Ex

Final Cut

Tracking Shot

The UK Crime Series

Blue Knight White Cross

Ballad of the One Legged Man

Through the Ruins of Midnight

Short Story Collection

Permission Granted

Children

Gargoyles—Skylights and Roofscapes

Horror

Darkwater Towers

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Here is a preview from Moonlight Rises, the second Dick Moonlight thriller by Vincent Zandri.

Click here for a complete catalog of titles available from Down & Out Books and its divisions and imprints.

Prologue

You’re dead.

You’re floating above a hospital bed that’s served as your final resting place for the past twenty-four hours, ever since the cops dragged your sad body from out of that back alley.

You’re dead.

Really stone dead this time.

You stare down at yourself and you’re amazed at how fucked up you look. Like fifty miles of chewed up road. White skin and bones, your now tight-jowled face carrying only a scarred remnant of its former baby-cheeked charm. “All teeth” as your mortician father used to say, cringing at the sorry state