Songs_of_the_Satyrs by Aaron J. French Read Free Book Online

faded blue pickup sat parked next to Ryan’s Audi.
    “I’ll lend you mine. Got to do another planting tomorrow while the weather holds. But I’ll leave the rod in the kitchen. It’s already got a fly on it. Try not to lose it. I’ve had it on there since last summer.”
    The two men paused at the edge of the drive to look at the house. Ryan could just make out the twirling form of Sophie on the wraparound porch as she spun into an arabesque before plopping herself down in the porch swing, her long middle finger raised in their direction. Tom grunted. His work boots crunched across the gravel to his truck.
    “Have fun with that. I’ve got to stop at the Wright’s and see Becca.”
    Ryan couldn’t resist any longer. “You know Rebecca Kimball?”
    Tom nodded. “She’s my cousin. Stoddard on her mother’s side.”
    Ryan didn’t miss the gleam in Tom’s eye as he leaned out of the cab window.
    “Everyone’s related in Greenfield. One way or another.”
     
    ***
     
    “Piece of shit.”
    Ryan slurped at the steaming black coffee. He set the homemade ceramic mug, covered in purple grape clusters and creeping green vines, down next to a heart carved into the old oak desk. He traced the letters notched into the heart with his finger—ES & BM—then wiped at the grime on the computer screen with the sleeve of his bathrobe, clicking away in frustration at the coffee-stained mouse.
    He pounded the blackened CTRL-ALT-DEL buttons once again, rubbing his bleary red eyes. His night in the guest room had been a frigid nightmare. Didn’t they believe in heat around here? Once the sun set, a cold breeze had crept down off of the mountain and Ryan had shivered under his quilt, longing for the central air in his Cape house.
    When a reluctant, frigid sleep finally accepted him, it was full of long brown limbs and defiant hazel eyes, the dulcet tones of Bach’s Sonata in E-flat and . . . something less pleasant.
    He had awoken to find himself sitting ramrod straight in the canopied bed, his bare skin goose fleshed in the mountain air. He had thrown the covers off and padded across the cold hardwood floor to the open window; had paused there and squinted through the predawn gloom, his hands on the window frame to lower it against the early morning chill.
    Had it been his imagination or was the ground fog seeping out of the wood bordering the farm?
    Then the thing in the dream had bubbled to the surface of his mind. At the remembrance of the shadowy, horned figure, Ryan had slammed the window shut and pulled the drapes.
    The spooks of the night had vanished with the rising, yellow, midsummer sun. And Ryan had shuffled out to the dew-covered Audi in his bathrobe to grab his laptop. Now he connected a cable between the laptop and the obstinate machine on the graffiti-covered desk and powered up.
    He shook his head as the lines of code scrolled up the screen. How the hell did they get so corrupted? It was like somebody had thrown a wrench in there. He let the two machines fight it out and turned to the safe at the side of the desk. He opened the folder Rebecca Kimball had given him yesterday after he had leaned over the hood of her Volvo and scribbled his signature with her silver pen. He found the combination on the back of her business card and spun the dial, left-right-left.
    Nothing.
    Okay, fine. Right-left-right.
    Still, the steel lever refused to budge.
    Ryan cursed under his breath and rattled the handle.
    “You ain’t gonna open it like that.”
    Ryan swiveled in the office chair. Sophie leaned against the door jamb in the same purple-stained cotton shift she’d worn the day before. Her bare toes cracked as she curled and stretched her feet like a ballerina warming up. Ryan slid back to the desk and checked the scrolling numbers on the computer.
    “You know how to get it open?”
    Her full brown lips bent into a smile. “Don’t matter. Becca changed the combination after the funeral.”
    Sophie pounced out of a pas de