Hide and Seek by Jack Ketchum Read Free Book Online Page A

but that was the only sound from him. I heard us running and that deep whoosh of breath and the crying of gulls. And that was all. A strange, quiet chaos.
     
    I went down beside him and put one arm behind his back to support him, just under his shoulders.
     
    "Relax. Relax."
     
    He looked at me and his eyes were not quite focusing. I saw a small scrape just below the hairline over his right eye. It would swell, but it didn't look too bad. A slight welling up of blood moving slowly to the surface. I looked into his hair for something worse. There was nothing. I guessed he was just shaken. I was damned relieved.
     
    Kim squatted down beside me. I saw her glance to the left of him a little and then heard that intake of breath again. Her face contracted squeamishly. I saw what she was looking at. His left arm was out at a right angle from us, the wrist just sort of dangling. The ball of the thumb was cut pretty badly. There was a steady flow of blood rolling down off his wrist and a flap of skin maybe two inches long pulled back toward the palm of his hand.
     
    "Get me something. Something to press over it and stop the bleeding.
    Hurry up."
     
    His eyes looked better now, even though the color was still gone from his face. I was pretty sure he'd be all right. He tried to talk to me. The look on his face was one of pure amazement.
     
    "She... she pushed me ..."
     
    I glared up at her. She hadn't moved. The bright sunlight always made her eyes go oddly transparent. Now it was like staring into two bright cubes of ice.
     
    "You want to tell me about it?"
     
    "No."
     
    "What the fuck is this about, Casey?"
     
    Kim came running back with my T-shirt. I helped her wrap it around his hand and showed her how to press it down.
     
    "Hard," I told her. Then I looked back at Casey.
     
    "I asked you something."
     
    I saw her shoulder relax slightly. Her voice was low, contemptuous.
    Scary.
     
    "You can go to hell."
     

She stepped back away from us.
     
    "You both can."
     
    I watched her disappear down the far face of the rock. I covered Kim's hand and helped her press down on Steven's wound. I glanced at Kim.
    She was totally concentrated on him.
     
    It was only then that I realized I was shaking.
     
    I never did find out what caused it, though I was pretty sure he'd made some moves on her. His mood was just silly enough for him to try.
     
    Nobody talked about it.
     
    We drove home with the girls in the backseat wrapped in towels and the two of us in front. Same as before. Only this time I was driving and Steve was clutching his hand, squeezing my bloody T-shirt to a wound that would take seven stitches once we got back to town.
     
    All the way home nobody said a word. The freeze between Casey and Kim was a palpable thing. You could hardly blame Kim. I was damned mad at her myself. No matter what had gone on up there, it was clear she'd overreacted, to say the very least. And then I kept seeing that cold unconcern on her face while she stared at us. It could have been a concussion. Yet all we got was anger.
     
    You had to wonder. How well did I even know her?
     
    And despite our weekend together, that kept coming up again. I kept wondering how many more surprises there would be like the one today, and whether I really wanted to be around to see them.
     
    I dropped the women off at their respective houses. Then I got a spare pair of pants from my apartment, helped him on with them and took him to Doc Richardson over on Cedar Street. I stood there watching through the injection, the bandaging, the stitching, the swabbing and patching of the head wound while the Doc complained good-naturedly that the times had not been good since Hoover.
     
    By the time we drove back through town Steve was feeling better. I dropped him at his parents' summer house and watched him move slowly up the field stone walk, through the white colonial doors.
     
    I didn't see him again for nearly a week.
     
    The next I saw of Kim she was still