Deathwatch by Dana Marton Read Free Book Online Page B

worrying about Murph, plus looking for chocolate in her coat pocket, that she didn’t notice the man in the dark sedan parked farther down the street.
     
     

 
     
    Chapter Four
     
     
    Man, being back was nice. Murph didn't even care that his shoulder throbbed with pain. He shrugged into the leather jacket he’d brought up from the basement and walked outside, around the house, scanning the property to make sure nothing needed his attention. He was itching to get to the station and run a background check on his mysterious tenant, but first he wanted to see his place in the daylight.
    He had a half-acre lot, large considering the fact that he was in the middle of town. Most other properties like his had been long subdivided.
    From time to time, he’d thought about doing the same. What he’d get for half the lot would pay for finishing the house. But he liked his privacy, too, liked it that nobody was living right in his back yard.
    He had little out there but grass and a few trees, now covered in snow, and a dilapidated barn at the far corner of the property that a previous owner had used as a workshop. The old building stood empty now.
    The yard looked all right, the snow hadn’t broken any major branches, the storms hadn’t pushed over any trees. Good. He already had enough on his to-do list. Not that he minded. The thought of putzing around the house with a tool belt made him happy.
    He walked over to Mrs. Baker’s rancher and checked her place, too. Since everything seemed fine, he went back to his own backyard.
    A young woman in jeans and a ski jacket was waving at him from the back deck on his other side.
    He waved back. “Hi.”
    “ Hey. I’m your new neighbor.” She beamed. “Wendy White.”  
    “ Murph Dolan.”  
    “ I know. I heard all about you from Doug. Welcome home. Thank you for your service!”  
    “ Uh, yeah.” He wiped his hands on his pants, trying for a smile and not quite succeeding as he walked to the back door of the garage. “I’ll see you around.”  
    The people who patted him on the back for being a soldier—starting right at the Philly airport—didn’t know the things he’d done, and the things that had been done to him. He was no small town hero, and he didn’t want to be one.
    He tapped the snow off his boots and stepped inside.
    The garage was the same as he’d left it, a spare set of tires in the corner, his tool boxes lined up against the wall.
    He climbed into his pickup and clicked the garage door opener above the visor. As the door slowly creaked up, he put his key in the ignition and turned it carefully, half expecting the battery to be dead. But his extended-cab Ford F-150 pickup came to life in the next second, the engine rumbling, and he felt as if the truck was saying welcome home to him.
    “ Good to see you, too, buddy.” He drove forward with a smile.  
    The boxy white mail truck trudged by just as he reached the end of his driveway. Since Robin Combs was a friend of his, he got out to say hi.
    “ How’s my favorite girl?”  
    She slipped from the truck, spry as anything. Her gray hair in her usual bob, angel earrings dangled from her ears. “I thought you might be home. I had a feeling.”
    He grinned. “I wish you’d have a feeling about the lottery numbers.”
    “ It’d be wrong to try,” she said in all seriousness, then her face turned even more somber. “You got hurt.”  
    He was probably holding his shoulders stiff. He rolled them. “Nothing serious. How have you been?”
    “ Moving to Upstate New York to be closer to my sister. I think she’s going to need my help with something soon so I’m retiring.”  
    “ What, twenty years early?”  
    Robin gave a whooping laugh. “If only. Truth is, all that sitting in the truck for all those years, my back’s killing me.”
    “ They might be able to find someone to hand out the mail, but they’ll never find anyone half as pretty as you, Robin.”  
    She looked seven shades