Blood and Ashes by Matt Hilton Read Free Book Online Page B

ever seen. There were often anomalies in birth, but the difference was a bit too dramatic to be explained by ancient DNA reasserting itself.
    Then there were the dates.
    Beth and Ryan’s births both pre-dated their parents’ wedding. Not unusual in this day and age, but enough to have placed doubt about parentage in my mind.
    ‘Who is their dad?’
    Don shook his head, unprepared or unwilling to answer.
    ‘It may be important, Don.’
    ‘You think that this has something to do with him ; a waste-of-time drunkard who left her with two small babies when the going got too tough for him? No, Hunter, you can forget that line of thinking. I’m telling you: this is all Hicks’ doing.’
    Up ahead the school bus was a yellow stain in the steamy haze rising from the road. Then it was gone and I realised that we were approaching the intersection where the mountain road joined the main highway.
    ‘Take a left,’ Don said.
    Don had already informed me that Adrian and the children lived in a house in its own walled enclosure, but had been a little vague on its location, saying that he’d direct me when we were on the road. So it was a distance from the city of Hertford where the school bus was heading to? Good and bad. Cities made things difficult if I had to respond in kind to violence: the cops were too close by and that severely hindered my options. But out in the wilds a house was exposed and difficult to defend. It was beginning to look like I was going to have to call in back-up.
    No, not yet, I decided, I still didn’t know what I was up against. For all I knew I was just being sucked into Don’s fantasy. It wasn’t a nice thought, but perhaps it would be better if the two men I’d killed turned out to be nothing but local low-lifes who’d made the mistake of confronting me.
    Something in me, though, also hoped that wasn’t the case.

Chapter 8
    If he chose, Vince Everett could be a real charmer. Sometimes he put his raffish good looks to the test, giving the ladies the flick of his pompadour and the curl of a lip. Other times he just shot them a glance from his baby blues. In fact in his late twenties, he appeared much younger, and he could rely on his teen-idol face and chirpy demeanour to disarm even the most cynical. Usually he would use this approach to inveigle his way past a person’s defences, but he had the sense that this time a more stealthy approach was in order. Don Griffiths was on edge and it stood to reason that his obsession with Carswell Hicks’ imminent return might also have rubbed off on his daughter Millie.
    Past experience told him that going in through the front door was never a good idea. Not when the potential for witnesses was too great. The back door would most likely be locked, but he’d find a window off the latch or some other form of ingress soon enough.
    Don’s vehicles, a Lexus and a chunky Merc SUV, were parked on the driveway but that wasn’t surprising. The door to the carport was wide open, and there were kids’ bikes and other toys taking up the area inside, relegating their grandfather’s vehicles to the whim of the elements. The kids’ belongings cost a fraction of what it would take to purchase a tyre for the Lexus, but wasn’t that the way of those that loved their brats?
    Vince glanced back and saw Sonya perching on the lip of the wishing well. She had her legs crossed, one ankle hooked under the other. She was waving her cell as if it was a microphone and she was conducting an interview with the invisible man. She caught him looking and flashed him a grin: loving playing the game.
    Vince glanced at the front windows. He couldn’t detect any movement. He then walked directly into the carport, negotiating his way around a spillage of Star Wars action figures. He had to step over a multicoloured tricycle. One of the kids had tried to make the bike even more colourful with juvenile slashes of a wax crayon. The child had outgrown the bike, but it still took precedence