Forests of the Night by James W. Hall Read Free Book Online Page B

His quiet blue eyes were heavy-lidded and moved with lazy ease. But the man drank her in with unsettling frankness. She felt the touch of his gaze like an insolent hand trickling across her cheeks.
    His sharp jawline and finely etched nose clashed with the blunt chin, the wide, bullish forehead. Belligerence and gentleness in equal measure. Crude yet refined. A face at war with itself.
    Now that she was only a few feet away from him, the tingle of uneasiness had grown to a bristling apprehension. She knew this guy from somewhere, and the bell it was ringing was sharp and discordant.
    Charlotte managed a guarded hello and shook the man’s thick hand.
    She had a sip of wine and could feel Parker watching her.
    The memory was there, hovering just out of view like one of those silly sayings trapped inside that fortune-telling eight ball from Charlotte’s youth. Ask a question, turn the ball over, and wait for the answer to float up throughthe thick liquid with the same painful sluggishness as this man’s face and identity were emerging from the sea of memory. Maybe his was a face from the pages of the countless mug shots she’d pored over, or one of the black-and-white printouts handed around at roll call. Or perhaps it came from some other realm entirely.
    Parker said, “I went to summer camp with Jacob’s uncle. We were cabinmates. Jacob’s passing through town and decided to look me up.”
    â€œTsali?” Charlotte was holding the stranger’s solemn stare.
    â€œCamp Tsali, yeah,” Parker said. “You know.”
    Yes, she did. Knew it damn well.
    â€œThat’s why we’re doing marshmallows,” Gracey called over. “In memory of summer camp. It was my idea.”
    Charlotte broke free of the man’s eyes and smiled at her daughter. Then she turned to Parker. He was gazing off at the swirl of sparks rising into the humid evening, though she could see enough of his face to know he was transporting himself to that mountain retreat his father had run for twenty years. For a man so city-tough, such an uncompromising realist, Parker Monroe could turn into a dreamy doofus in a micromoment.
    Mention summer camp and a blush came to his cheeks, a shy smile surfaced, eyes looking off toward those summery fields where his best self still drew the longbow and planted arrows dead center from fifty yards away. She’d heard it all. Seen the Kodaks. Even gone with him once up to the fog-shrouded Carolina mountains and hiked over cow pastures and streams and a bald precipice to reach the gravel road that led to the padlocked gates of Camp Tsali. The place had closed for good the night Parker’s father died.
    That day Charlotte and Parker had climbed the gates of Camp Tsali, hiked up the steep entrance drive through a green tunnel of pines, then wandered for hours around that ghost town of log cabins and weed-infested playing fields and Indian ceremonial rings. She’d listened to the stories, and was genuinely touched by Parker’s zeal. It would be easy to mock the whole thing as a bunch of spoiled country-club boys dressing up in beaded loincloths and face paint, while in their spare time working on their backhands and chip shots. But Camp Tsali was anything but cushy. It was a hell of a lot more primitive than she could have handled at that age.She would’ve bailed after a single night on those unforgiving cots, and peeing without privacy in open latrines. The Coral Gables holding cells had more creature comforts.
    â€œIndian lore,” Parker said to Gracey. “That was the big thing. Tribal dances, songs, Cherokee history. Lots of woodcraft. How to survive in the wilderness. Which berries you could eat and which would kill you. Making fires, lean-tos, all that stuff.”
    Gracey rolled her eyes and gave Charlotte a look. Here we go again. Stouthearted man time.
    Charlotte returned the look, then had a sip of her wine and angled to the left of the fire