A Stolen Season by Steve Hamilton Read Free Book Online

eh? What do you think?”
    What I thought was that she was making jokes about it because she had no idea what she was getting into. That she was even more scared than I was, if that were even possible.
    “Natalie, for God’s sake. Are you gonna be careful?”
    “Of course I am. When we’re all done here, you’re going to come out and visit me, right?”
    “Sure. Of course I will.”
    “I’ve got to go to bed now, Alex. I need to meet with everybody again first, then get ready for another meet at the coffee shop.”
    “You’re gonna call me tomorrow night?”
    “I honestly don’t know. I’ll try to call if I get a chance. But things might happen fast here. Once I get in the hotel, we’ll be pretty much working this thing around the clock. It’s like my whole life will be on hold for a while.”
    “I understand. Call me when you can.”
    “I will. Just don’t wait up for me, okay? It’s going to be hard enough.”
    “Hard enough? What do you mean?”
    “I’m sorry. That sounds bad.”
    “Just tell me.”
    “I’ve got to do this, Alex. Okay? I’ve got to do this the only way I can. I can’t be thinking about anything else tomorrow.”
    “All right,” I said. “I got it.”
    “I wish you were here right now. I really do.”
    “Me, too.”
    “I’ll talk to you later.”
    I didn’t want to end the call like that. But I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t want to put any more pressure on her, didn’t want to add any more weight to her burden. I said good night and that was it.
    A week later, and I still hadn’t spoken to her. She’d leave a message every couple of days. Always during the day, never at night. I’m okay, she’d say, things are moving fast, talk to you soon. I couldn’t call her back, of course. At any moment she might have been in character, with Rhapsody or God knows who else right there in the room with her.
    Seven days, and the only time I wasn’t thinking about her were those few minutes on the night of July 4, when I was pulling those guys off the sinking boat. Otherwise, no matter what I was doing, working on the cabin with Vinnie, sitting at the Glasgow, lying in my bed and staring at the ceiling, she’d be right there in my head and I’d be wondering if she was safe.
    Seven days with me going quietly insane while Natalie put her head in the lion’s mouth.

Chapter Three
     
    The morning after the boat wreck, I woke up so goddamned sore, it was like I had been in the wreck myself. My arms hurt, my back hurt, and it felt like I had somehow pulled both hamstrings. Getting out of bed was comical. I got in a hot shower and let the water pound on me until I loosened up a little bit. When I was dressing I looked outside and saw the trees bending. That plus a light rain I knew would feel like cold buckshot in the wind. It’s July 5, I told myself. This is not a hallucination. It’s really the middle of the damned summer.
    A cup of coffee and I was out the door. I could have gone down to the Glasgow for breakfast, but I wanted to get two hours of work done before I did that. I got in the truck and headed down the access road, past the second cabin my father had built, then the third, the fourth, and the fifth. They were all empty now. The people who had booked them had looked in the newspaper, had seen a high of maybe fifty-two degrees, a low of thirty-nine. They had decided they could just stay home and be miserable instead of coming all the way up here. I couldn’t blame them.
    I came to the last cabin, a half mile down the road. I had been rebuilding it for the past few months. Vinnie had been helping me when he could. Things had once gotten a little sideways between the two of us, and this is how we made up. He showed up to help one morning, and without saying a word we were good again.
    When I got out of the truck, I spent a few minutes looking around the outside. The little grooves I had cut on the bottom logs were doing their job, collecting the rain and