Robards, Karen by Midnight Hour Read Free Book Online

the midnight blue of the sky.
    “Yeah.” It was a brief answer, but the best Tony could manage under the circumstances. The sick nausea that had been churning in his stomach was only just now beginning to recede. The crisp breeze felt good against his damp skin, reviving him. He’d broken into a cold sweat in that treatment room; he couldn’t believe he’d done that, that just being in that damned hospital had affected him so, but it had.
    He’d thought he was over it, by now.
    Correction. He had hoped he was over it, by now. He was never going to get over it.
    “The mother was a real ball-breaker, wasn’t she?” Dominick’s hand was on his arm, steering him unob-
     
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    KAREN ROBARDS
    trusively toward the parking lot when Tony would have walked blindly off into the night. He allowed his brother to guide him, concentrating on getting his body back under control.
    “Yeah.” It had been the smell that had done it, he thought, that unforgettable, indescribable hospital smell.
    That, or watching the suffering of another sick little girl.
    The halogen lights in the half-empty parking lot closest to the emergency room gave off an eerie yellow glow. Insects by the dozen fluttered in the vapory illumination.
    A small white moth flew directly toward him, targeting him with the precision of a kamikaze bomber. Tony dodged and felt its soft wings brush his cheek.
    “Damned bugs,” he said, swatting at it and missing. The moth circled back up toward the light.
    “You gonna go see the mother tomorrow, or you want me to?” Dominick asked. They had reached the Camaro, and Dom automatically walked around to the driver’s side. Ever the big brother, he thought it was his birthright to drive.
    Not that Tony Iminded. Dom had basically pulled him from the darkest pit in hefl, sobered him up, kept him alive. Dom could drive if he wanted to.
    “I’ll do it.” “You sure?” “Yeah. “
    They got into the car. Its interior was stuffy, and Tony could still faintly recaH the nauseating hospital
    THE MIDNIGHT HOUR
    47
    smell. He didn’t know if it was in his mind or on his clothes, but it had to go or he would be sick for sure. He rolled down the window, breathing deeply, inhaling the murky smell of the nearby river and the acrid scent of some fresh-laid asphalt and the lingering gaseous exhaust of an old clunker that had chugged out of the parking lot two rows over.
    It didn’t matter what the smell was. Raw sewage was better than hospital.
    “You okay?” Dominick asked again.
    “Yeah,” Tony answered, with greater truth this time. As the car moved out of the parking lot, neither of them noticed the white moth make another dive, this time soaring right through the open window.
    For a moment, after that, the shape of a young girl appeared, sitting in the back seat. She was about eleven years old, small and thin, with straight black hair that reached her waist. She wore a frilly white dress, white ankle socks, and black Mary Janes. Her hands were folded prirrily in her lap.
    Her eyes, wide and dark and haunting, were fixed with a kind of sadness on the man in the front passenger seat.
    She was there for no more than a pair of seconds before she faded, becoming no more substantial than a shadow in the length of time it took to draw a single breath. Then she disappeared altogether.
    Neither man saw her.
    Tony took another, ineffectual swat at a small white moth as it flew past his cheek and out the car window, then soared upward into the great dark vastness of the night.

Chapter
7
    T WAS APPPOXIMATELY FOUR-THIRTY in the afCcernoon. Grace was so tired she could barely move, so tired it was an effort to focus on what was, fortunately, her second to last case of the day. The courtroom was overwarm and smelled of Lemon Pledge, musty carpet, and stressed-out human beings. The fluorescent lights concealed behind the translucent ceiling overhead were so bright as to be blinding. The combination did nothing for her incipient