Dead Run by P. J. Tracy Read Free Book Online

amused by Annie's look of concentration as she peered inside.
    "This is so disorganized. Is it supposed to look like this?" "Sort of." Sharon leaned forward, then tipped her head to look at Grace. "What are you thinking?" "That we need a tow truck."
    Annie looked at the obviously useless engine as if it were a puppy that had just wet on the rug, then flounced back to the car and snatched her cell phone from the backseat.
    "Not a lot of towers around here," Sharon said, but that didn't stop Annie from waving the phone around like a magic wand as she spun in a slow circle, trying to snatch a signal out of the hot, heavy air. She tried Grace's phone, too, just in case hers was in some way inferior, then let her hands drop to her sides, thoroughly indignant. "This is outrageous. It's the twenty-first century, we're in the most technologically advanced country in the world, and I cannot make a phone call. How do people live like this?"
    For a moment, the three of them stood quietly, looking around. There was a deep, unnatural silence to the shadowy forest, as if it weren't a real forest at all, just a movie set. It was Grace who finally uttered the words Annie dreaded most.
    "I guess we walk."
    Annie looked down helplessly at her beautiful, fluttery silk dress and her beautiful four-inch heels.
    "I've got some extra tennies in my bag," Sharon offered.
    "Thank you," Annie said, then thought about it for a minute, considering what was really important. "What color are they?"
    As it turned out, they were lavender high-tops, and as Annie looked down at the rounded toes, damned if she didn't like what she saw.
    "You look ridiculous," Grace said.
    "I refuse to entertain fashion criticism from a woman with a hundred black T-shirts. Besides, you put some heels on these things and they just might work."
    The logging road, if that's what it was, quickly deteriorated to a narrow dirt path pocked with the sliced prints of deer. Eventually, even the tracks of animals disappeared under a thick carpet of crackling, rust-colored needles. On either side, the forest thickened and darkened, with the lacy fronds of giant ferns quivering at their passage.
    Annie eyed the foliage suspiciously, thinking it looked entirely too prehistoric for her taste. And it wasn't just the tropical heat or the mutant ferns that reminded her ofLand of the host-everything about this little excursion had set them back ten thousand years. "This is absurd," she mumbled, shifting the strap of her voluminous shoulder bag. Grace had tried to talk her out of taking it, but the day Annie went anywhere without her makeup would be the day they put her in the ground. "An hour ago, we were three intelligent, successful women in a seventy-thousand-dollar car with cell phones and some of the most advanced computer equipment on the face of the earth, and now we're slogging through a primordial forest like the Barbarella triplets."
    Sharon laughed. "Nature's the great equalizer."
    "Nature sucks. It's hot and sticky, and it smells like dirt out here. And by the way, would you two waifs slow down? You're with a size-large woman who's wearing flat shoes for the first time in her life, and this path is a death trap. There are tree roots poking out everywhere. Somebody should pave this thing."
    The ninety-degree heat made short work of Annie's laundry list of grievances about the great outdoors, and silence closed around their little parade. The farther into the woods they went, the more the forest seemed to press down on them as giant pines linked boughs overhead, creating a dark, aromatic canopy. The silence was as dense as the tightly packed carpet of dried needles underfoot, and as oppressive as the weight of air so still it almost seemed to have substance.
    Eventually, the trees seemed to thin a bit, and then abruptly, the woods opened before them, like a door onto a lighted room. They took a step out of the trees onto a circle of old, broken asphalt that formed a crude cul-de-sac. It