In The Forest Of Harm by Sallie Bissell Read Free Book Online

single drop of blood had spattered against his thigh.
    He stared at the squirming bug between his fingers. “You’re gonna go dancing with your buddy,” he announced, placing it next to the other tick on his knife. “It’s not nice to suck people’s blood.”
    He curled around the fire and placed the knife over a lapping tongue of flame. The ticks were oblivious to it. They would be at first. Then the blade would heat up and they would begin to crawl faster and faster, searching for a way off the red-hot blade, only to find that their only way off was into the fire itself. Brank chuckled as he settled down to watch the show. He loved tick dances. He held them most every night.
    When the ticks finally plunged into the fire with a sizzle and a sputter he put Buster back in the sack and wrapped up in an old wool blanket. He wondered if he wasn’t getting too old for all this damp cold. His leg ached every night and there was a stiffness in his shoulders that no longer went away. Maybe now was the time to head south. He’d read that living was easy in Florida if you could get past Disney World. ’Course there were alligators and coral snakes down there, but it was warm, and the Everglades were, to his knowledge, without cold and frost and the specter of his sister. He sighed. If he could just kill Trudy once and for all, heading south would be exactly what he would do.
    He pulled his shotgun close beside him, curled himself around the fire and stared out into the cottony haze. Not being able to see anything made him edgy—his nose and ears had never been as good as Fate’s. And who knew what madness Trudy or the trolls might do if they snuck up on him unawares? He hugged his rifle close and sighed. Maybe they couldn’t see him, either. Anyway, there was nothing he could do about it now.
    â€œDon’t borrow trouble,” Henry Brank chided himself as he settled down to rest. To hike these pelts to Little Jump Off without getting lost in the Hell or eaten by Trudy would be trouble enough of its own.

FIVE
    Mary, do people like Cal Whitman ever get to you in court?” Joan sprawled lazily in the tire swing that hung from the oak tree, watching as Mary and Alex finished their lunch.
    â€œOh, please don’t get her started on that,” Alex mumbled through a mouthful of one of Charlie Carter’s special turkey-and-jalapeno sandwiches. “She’s not convinced she’s hung the right man.”
    â€œReally?” Joan sat up straight in the swing. That Mary might doubt a conviction surprised her.
    Mary sipped a diet Coke, a faraway look coming into her eyes. “Not totally.”
    â€œHow come? I thought you had that guy nailed from the get-go.”
    â€œHis dick was hanging out of his pants when the cops got there,” Mary replied. “Don’t you think a man would at least zip his fly before he broke a girl’s neck?”
    Alex snorted. “Not if he’d raped her, and they were both stoned. It seems weird, but not impossible.”
    â€œYeah.” Joan spun around once in the tire swing. “Didn’t the defense counsel say Cal had no memory of what happened that night?”
    Mary nodded. “That’s supposedly why he never took the stand.”
    â€œWell, then just take the dumb conviction and run.” Alex finished her last bite of sandwich. “You stew about these things too much, Mary.”
    â€œI know.” Mary frowned at the rust-colored mountains that encircled the little church and its placid grave-yard. “Something about that case just doesn’t feel right, though.”
    Joan lit a cigarette and shivered. “I envy your courage. I don’t see how you can deal with that stuff every day.”
    â€œOur little Mary is tough.” Alex leaned over and tapped Mary on the head. “See how hard that noggin is?”
    â€œNo, really,” Joan persisted. “Don’t you ever