DoubleDown V by John R. Little and Mark Allan Gunnells Read Free Book Online

bed, and I’ll wake up feeling hurt and bleeding, and I’ll know he’s found me.
    But would he?  She struggled to pull back the funny parts of Bobby that she liked so much, the jokes and the ability to not take anything too seriously.
    Then her mind would turn back to the old man, surely dead now.
    I can never let him find me.
    She’d stay away from the beach and keep a closer eye on things when she walked around town, but that was no guarantee.
    Karen knew that everyone left footprints wherever they went.  Did he snoop on her Facebook page?  Did he know her cell number?  There were a lot of opportunities to follow her home from school or church.
    I told him Dad’s name.
    When her dad had died, she remembered talking to Bobby, telling him how lost she felt.  She tried to make a joke about her dad’s name, but now that comment was haunting her.  If Bobby remembered Parker Samson Richardson’s name, it’d be easy to find where she lived.  Easy as slicing an old man’s neck.
    She didn’t have to be sleeping when he found her, of course.  If time stopped for her, and he had his freedom, it could happen anytime at all.  He could attack her at dinner or in the middle of English class, and she would just feel pain hit her out of the blue.
    Only she would know what had happened.
    Karen tossed and turned with worry, not falling asleep until after four o’clock.  When Mom woke her by jostling her arm, she cried out in fear, pulling away from the only person in the world that she could totally trust.
     
    *   *   *
     
    Two weeks later time froze in the middle of English Lit, with Mrs. Frey rambling on about the theme of Hamlet .  Although Karen had enjoyed reading the play, she hated the way Mrs. Frey would dissect every little bit of it and ask the class, “What does this scene really mean?”
    Karen never got it, so she was thankful for a break.
    She gave a mock salute to Mrs. Frey as she walked toward the door.  Her desk was at the back of the class, because the teacher liked to have all the troublemakers near the front.
    Bonnie MacDonald was two desks over and one up from Karen; she went to look at her friend.  She only hesitated a second before running her hand through Bonnie’s hair and touching her cheek.  She thought about watching Bonnie masturbating and wished she could find a way to make that happen again.
    Reluctantly, she left the class and passed through the halls to the closest exit.  Cautious, she looked around but couldn’t see Bobby Jersey anywhere.
    There were several houses nearby that she’d never visited so she went inside the first one.
    She found Alexander Michaels sitting in his bedroom.   Mr. Michaels was a forty-year-old chubby guy who worked the evening shift at Starbucks.  Karen had been served by him several times and was always a bit creeped out when he handed over the proper change and grinned at her.  She always felt weird.
    He had his pants pulled down to his ankles.  His penis was flaccid, but she suspected it wasn’t going to stay that way for long.
    Karen was pretty sure he lived alone.  The bed was unmade and the closet door was open.  Only a few men’s shirts hung there, no dresses or women’s clothing of any kind.
    “Can’t say I’m surprised at that.”
    Michaels was at a desk staring at his laptop.  He was in a chat room, and when Karen read through the notes on the screen she felt awful.  He was talking to a fourteen-year-old girl, pretending to be a boy her age.
    Beside him was a stack of printed paper.  She flipped through it, shocked to see dozens of transcripts, each one with him talking to a young girl.  They all seemed to end with him asking to meet her.
    She took the papers, and shoved them in a manila file folder, and carried them with her as she left.
    “Gonna stop you, pervert.”
    She wanted to slap the guy—or worse—but she thought it would suffice to mail the printouts to the police and let them take care of things.  Alexander