Gray Salvation by Alan McDermott Read Free Book Online Page A

the curtains, and a sofa that went well with the polished wooden floors . . .
    Thinking about his late wife created a hollow sensation in his chest. A part of him had been ripped out and tossed into the fire that had stolen his wife and nearly his daughter. He barely spent a day without thinking about her, and often he found himself unable to shake the image of the flames leaping around her, as she lay helpless.
    He shook his head, trying to clear away the image. He had to move on, to take care of Melissa, something he wouldn’t be able to do if he let such thoughts consume him.
    He picked up the local directory and flicked to the daycare section, trying to take his mind off the past. Melissa would need to start integrating with other children her age, and then there was schooling to sort out, which meant he would be busy for the next couple of weeks at least.
    The doorbell rang, a strange sound he was hearing for the first time. He walked into the hallway and saw Melissa looking up at him, also puzzled by the odd tone.
    Gray opened the door and saw a couple standing on the porch, smiling, with arms around each other as they held out a basket between them. They both looked to be in their late fifties.
    ‘Howdy, neighbour!’ the woman said. ‘I’m Sue Wilburn, and this is my husband, Frank. We live next door and just wanted to welcome you to the neighbourhood.’
    Gray was momentarily taken aback. This wasn’t something he was used to, and had certainly never happened to him back in England.
    ‘I— Er . . . thanks.’
    Melissa wandered up beside him and clung to his right leg.
    ‘Oh, isn’t she adorable! What’s your name, honey?’
    ‘This is Melissa,’ Gray said, lifting her up. ‘I’m Tim. Tim Grayson.’
    An awkward silence ensued, until Gray found his manners. ‘Won’t you come in?’
    He stood aside and let the couple walk into the hallway.
    ‘So where’d ya move from, Tim?’
    ‘England,’ Gray said. ‘We had a little place just outside London.’
    ‘Oh, I love London,’ Sue said, her high-pitched voice already beginning to get on Gray’s nerves. ‘Wasn’t it terrible what happened last year? My God! It must have been awful with all those bombs going off. Were you and Melissa affected at all?’
    ‘No,’ Gray said, ‘we were visiting family abroad when it happened.’
    It was a lie he’d been working on for some time, along with the pseudonym. The whole point of leaving Britain was to get away from Tom Gray’s past and build a safe future for Melissa. He’d decided against a new forename for his daughter because changing it now would have been too confusing for her.
    He didn’t like lying to his new neighbours, but it was easier than explaining that he had once been Britain’s most notorious criminal, presumed dead for more than a year before returning to the limelight and exposing the UK government’s wet-ops team that had tried to kill him and his friends. It wouldn’t be easy to get across the fact that, though he’d subsequently killed half a dozen men, he was really an okay guy who simply wanted to make a fresh start in the good old US of A.
    The move abroad had taken a lot longer than he’d planned. Nine months longer, to be exact. The bombings Sue mentioned hadn’t been confined to London. The entire country had been hit, with blasts reported in every major town and city. More than ten thousand people had lost their lives, and the effect on the economy was still being felt. Gray had hoped for a quick sale on his house once the dust settled, but the bottom had dropped out of the property market weeks after the attackers were rounded up. He’d put his home on the market at below the suggested price in order to get a quick sale, but interest had been minimal. Even dropping it to eighty per cent of its true value hadn’t been an instant success, but eventually a property tycoon had come along and snapped up the bargain.
    ‘What do you do for a living, Tim?’ Frank