Shattered by Dean Koontz Read Free Book Online

five minutes brought. Then I asked you if you wanted to bet.”
        “Maybe we ought to take a detour down to Las Vegas,” Alex said. “I'll just tag along with you in the casinos and do what you tell me.”
        Colin was so pleased by the compliment that he could not think of anything to say. He hugged himself and dropped his head, then looked out the side window and smiled toothily at his own vague reflection in the glass.
        Although the boy was not aware of it, Doyle could see that reflection when he took a quick look at Colin to see why he had become silent so suddenly. Understanding, he grinned himself and relaxed against the seat, the last bit of tension draining out of him. He saw that he had not fallen in love with one person, but with two. He loved this skinny, overly intellectual boy almost as much as he loved Courtney. it was the sort of realization that could make a man forget the uncertainty and shallow, disquieting fear of the morning.
        
        When he originally mapped the trip and called ahead from Philly to make reservations, and again when he mailed the room-deposit check four days ago, Doyle had told the people at the Lazy Time Motel that he and Colin would arrive between seven and eight o'clock Monday evening. At seven-thirty, precisely in the middle of his estimate, he drove into the motel's lot, just east of Indianapolis, and parked by the office.
        Their rooms were reserved ahead for the entire trip. Doyle did not want to drive six hundred miles only to spend half the night looking for a vacancy.
        He shut off the headlights, then the car. The silence was eerie. Gradually the traffic sounds from the Interstate came to him, forlorn cries on the early-night air. “How's this for a schedule?” he asked Colin. “A hot shower, a good supper. Then we call Courtney - and hit the sack for eight hours.”
        “Sure,” Colin said. “But could we eat first?”
        The request was an unusual one for him. He was as light an eater as Doyle had been at his age. When they had stopped for lunch today, Colin nibbled at one piece of chicken, ate some cole slaw, a dish of sherbet, drank a Coke - then proclaimed himself “stuffed.”
        “Well,” Doyle said, “we're not so grubby they'll refuse to let us in the restaurant. But I want to get our rooms first.” He opened his door and let the chill but muggy night air into the car. “You wait here for me.”
        “Sure,” Colin said. “If I can get out of this seatbelt now.”
        Alex smiled, unfastened his own belt. “I really scared you, did I?”
        Colin gave him a lopsided smile. “If you want to look at it that way.”
        “Okay, okay,” Doyle said. “Take off your seatbelt, Colin me boy.”
        When he got out of the car and stretched his legs, he saw that the Lazy Time Motel was just what the tour-guide book said it was: clean, pleasant, but inexpensive. It was built as a large L, with the neon-framed office at the junction of the two wings. Forty or fifty doors, all alike and spaced as evenly as the slats in a fence, were set into undistinguished red-brick walls. A concrete promenade fronted both wings and was covered by a corrugated aluminum awning supported by black wrought-iron posts every ten feet. A soda machine stood just outside the office door, humming and clinking to itself.
        The office was small, but the walls were bright yellow, the tile floor clean and polished. Doyle crossed to the counter and struck the bell for service.
        “Just a minute !” a woman called from behind a bamboo-curtained doorway at the end of the work area on the business side of the counter.
        Beside the counter was a rack of magazines and paperback books. A sign above the rack read: Tonight, Why Not Read Yourself To Sleep? While Doyle waited for the clerk, he looked at the books, though he would not need anything to make him sleepy after all day on the road.
        “Sorry to make you