Shorts - Thriller 2: Stories You Just Can't Put Down by _Collection Read Free Book Online Page A

made a big hole exiting the back of the deputy’s head.
    Chrissie snapped awake as the blast roiled across the empty parking lot.
    “What the hell?”
    “Took care of the issue, baby.” Tom squared his shoulders and sucked his gut in. “Goddamn, that’s what I’m talking about.”
    “You fucking killed a cop.” Chrissie stood up, legs wobbly. “That ain’t taking care of no issues. That’s making new ones.”
    “He’d seen us together, baby.” Tom stuck the gun in his waistband. His heart thumped a disco beat in his rib cage, whump whump whump. “Couldn’t do anything else. Besides, got us a ride out of here.”
    “Ah, Tommy. You’re the greatest.” She staggered toward the cop car.
    Tom grabbed his briefcase and ran after her. “I—I love you, baby.”
     
    Why does any man begin an affair? Was it the impending fortieth birthday and the loss of vigor and sexual prowess traditionally associated with middle age?
    Or was it the utter banality of living with the same woman for the past fifteen years, through the ups and downs of raising three children and a succession of overly precocious golden retrievers. Tom thought it something more profound, the need deep inside every male to experience one thing to the fullest, to nurture a spark into a roaring fire. To throw away the rearview mirror of life and press the accelerator to the floor. To be a man, dammit.
    Chrissie sat in the passenger seat of the squad car, knees tucked under her chin, exposing the full length of her tanned legs.
    Tom tried to concentrate on the road and not her thighs.
    She said, “Where we going?”
    “We need to get some more Ice.” Tom lit a Marlboro Light with one shaking hand. “Then I figure we get the cash I’ve been giving Bijoux and head south somewhere. I hear you can live like a king in Costa Rica, with plenty of gringo dollars.”
    “Do you even know how to speak Mexican?” Chrissie scratched her left breast.
    “We’re not going to Mexico, baby.” Tom pulled around a slow-moving pickup loaded with hay. “We’re gonna be the king and queen of Costa Rica. I’ll buy us one of those learn-to-speak-Spanish tapes and we’ll be fluent in no time.”
    “Let’s just get the Ice and the money first, huh?” Chrissie drummed her fingers on the dash and looked out the rear window. “Then we’ll figure it out.”
     
    Chrissie had arrived in town one month before, on a one-way bus ticket from Shreveport, vague about her past except it involved a crazy ex with a mean right hook. She’d just gotten a job at the local vet’s clinic when Tom had brought the dog in for a bath.
    The attraction was instantaneous and electric, beginning with furtive glances and then an accidental brush of their hands when Tom handed over a check. A volley of double entendres ended up with Tom asking her to lunch. To his horror and amazement, she said yes.
    He’d persuaded the vet to keep the dog for the remainder of the weekend. He then called his wife and told her an old college friend had gotten thrown in jail in Waco and he was going to bail him out. He’d be home in time for dinner. Probably. It was early Saturday afternoon, and he could tell by her voice she had started on the second bottle of white zinfandel and only really cared about number three.
    They went to a barbecue joint one county over and then on to a room at the Shangri-la Motel on Highway Six. The first time they did it, right as he started to come, Chrissie grabbed his balls and gave ’em a good squeeze. Tom had never felt anything as intense and pleasurable and thought he never would again.
    That was before they met the next weekend and Chrissie brought a foil package of Ice, the greatest substance known to mankind.
    Thirty days later, Tom was in a stolen squad car driving toward a tar-paper juke joint called Jolie’s, looking to score enough meth and money to get them to Costa Rica and a new life. Tom took a deep breath and smiled. This is living, man.
    The squad car