Black Lightning by John Saul Read Free Book Online Page B

Glen, and was instantly consumed by a desire to be held by him, to feel his arms around her, his lips on hers, his strength pulling her close to him.
    She would be all right. In a few hours she would be with Glen again; in a few days, a few weeks, she would begin to forget the clinical precision of what she’d just seen.
    But would she ever be able to forget the terrible hatred that had poured forth from Richard Kraven even as he’d died?



CHAPTER 6

    T he wailing siren built to a deafening crescendo that was abruptly silenced as the ambulance braked to a stop in front of the construction site. Both doors flew open and two white-clad men leapt from the cab, one of them racing around to the back of the vehicle to pull out a stretcher, the other, carrying a small tank of oxygen and a face mask, breaking into a run toward the area where Glen Jeffers lay.
    “Let me through,” the paramedic commanded as he pushed his way through the crowd gathered around the fallen man. “Who’s in charge here?” Without waiting for a reply, he knelt beside Glen’s body, quickly felt for a pulse, then put the mask on Glen’s face and turned the oxygen to high flow.
    “We think he had a heart attack,” Jim Dover said. “We were all up on top. All of a sudden Glen started looking weird. We thought it was just fear of heights, but—”
    His words were cut off as the second paramedic pushed through the crowd, unrolled the portable stretcher and lay it next to the unconscious body. “Myocardial infarction?”
    “Looks like it,” the first medic said. “Let’s get him on the stretcher and into the truck.” Working together like a well-oiled machine, the two paramedics moved Glen onto the stretcher, then started back toward the ambulance. The construction crew fanned out ahead of the stretcher, clearing the way, while Alan Cline, together with George Simmons and Jim Dover, kept pace next to Glen.
    “He’s a member of Group Health,” Alan Cline said, his voice trembling as he saw the bluish cast his partner’s face had taken on. “If you can take him up there—”
    The paramedics slid the stretcher into the back of the ambulance, one of them climbing in to attach Glen to the waiting IV and heart monitor. “You can go with him,” the driver told Alan Cline. “There’s plenty of room, and if he wakes up—”
    Alan Cline didn’t wait to hear the medic finish what he was saying, but scrambled into the back of the ambulance. The driver slammed the door shut, then dashed around to the driver’s seat. The ambulance started up the street, turned right up the steep slope of the hill, and then the siren came on.
    Muffled by the walls of the ambulance, its wail took on a mournful, keening note, and as Alan Cline gazed at his partner, he wondered if it would be possible for Glen to survive at all.
    It was like slowly coming awake in a pitch-dark room. Except the first thing that met him as he came into consciousness was pain .
    Pain such as he’d never experienced before .
    Pain that consumed him .
    Pain that threatened to tear his mind apart .
    Away!
    He had to get away from the pain before it destroyed him .
    Where?
    Where was he?
    His mind struggled against the blackness, and slowly it began to recede .
    Now he could hear sound .
    It seemed to be coming from somewhere far in the distance, but in a moment Glen was able to identify it .
    A siren, like a police car, or an ambulance .
    The dark receded further, and he was able to see. But it was odd—he seemed to be floating in some dimension he didn’t quite understand. Far below him, he could see two men crouching near a figure on a stretcher. They were confined by walls, as if perhaps they were in—
    An ambulance!
    But why?
    Even as the question came into his mind, he knew the answer, and looked down once more at the figure on the stretcher .
    He was looking at himself .
    His shirt was open, his chest bare, and his face looked as pale as death .
    Death .
    The word hung in his