A Ghost of a Chance by Minnette Meador Read Free Book Online Page A

brain went on break and it took him a moment to locate the memory containing his wallet. “It’s in my jeans in the bedroom.”
    “Come with me, sir.” Thompson didn’t wait for a reply, and Keenan was an obedient shadow behind him as they made their way through the house.
    When they got to the bedroom, Keenan flicked the light switch, but it didn’t work. He tried the hall light and it flared on but didn’t send much in the way of illumination through the door.
    He scurried through the darkness to find his pants and pull out his wallet, crunching glass under his rubber soles. Disentangling it from the inside-out jeans with shaking fingers took forever, but it finally gave with a good tug. The stuffed old leather overflowed with cards of all kinds, some expired, some not, along with lots of miscellaneous junk. Buried in the back somewhere, it took Keenan a few seconds to extract his driver’s license from the tight wad.
    When he handed it over, the burly man in blue rumbled at the ID under his flashlight and finally handed it back. That was when he leveled a stern look at Keenan. He played his light over the broken glass, disheveled bed, and scattered remnants of Keenan’s personal life.
    “Would you care to explain this?” he growled.
    Keenan did some dancing.
    “Mice,” he said. “Big ones.”
    Apparently, Officer Thompson had no sense of humor since he didn’t even crack a smile. He tucked his flashlight into his belt, then put one hand on his holster and the other on his nightstick, obviously trying to figure out which he should use first.
    Keenan put up his hands and tried to smile. “Kidding…sorry. Chasing the cat…”
    Thompson shook his head and turned for the door. Keenan barely made his way past the officer to show him through the house.
    When Keenan led him to the front door, the officer gave his house a professional once over with his eyes and left without saying another word.
    Keenan closed the door carefully, turned his back to it, and slid to the floor. This had been one hell of a night.

 
     
     
     
    Chapter Five
Apparition Advice
     
    When Keenan was twelve his mother married husband number six, Jack, a brute of a man who worked as a longshoreman on Swan Island. Jack wasn’t like a lot of the others; he was mean right down to the bone. A yeller by trade, Jack sat on his ass more than he worked. The only exercise this guy got as far as young Keenan was concerned was a daily workout that involved smacking the boy around the room. Keenan got to the point where he thought everyone heard ringing in their ears.
    On a very dark November night a day after his fourteenth birthday (which was only noted as a black scribble on the calendar hanging on the fridge), Keenan got home from his job at the bread store to hear a loud shouting match coming from his house. He stopped on the sidewalk and contemplated just turning around and heading back to work another shift, but his hunger proved a stronger impulse. He thought he could sneak in and just grab a quick bite first.
    The row was nothing unusual; hell, the two went at each other pretty much every night lately. When he walked through the door, before he even hung up his backpack, a loud slap and a thump echoed into the kitchen followed by his mother’s scream.
    What Keenan did next surprised the hell out of him. It wasn’t that he and his mother were exactly close; he spent hours figuring out ways to avoid her. It wasn’t even the fact that she was his mother. What goaded him into action was something ingrained into him by her from the day he was born. A man never strikes a woman.
    He found himself charging straight for the son of bitch at full speed. Another smack , smack , smack got his legs moving even faster. Keenan wasn’t a big boy at fourteen, but he had hit his spurt early so he was tall and what his mother used to call gangly. Six hours kneading bread at the store every day for the last two years had given him a healthy set of arms and