Stirred by Blake Crouch, J.A. Konrath Read Free Book Online Page B

could hear the tears in his voice, but he didn’t care.
    “Why are you calling? Is Mom okay?”
    “She’s fine.” He turned away from the man who was going to murder him and leaned into the tinted glass. “I’m sorry, Carly. For everything. You are my—”
    “Dad, I’m kind of in the middle of something…could I give you a call back in—”
    “Listen to me. Please. I was wrong, Carly. So wrong.”
    “Have you been drinking?”
    “No. No. Carly, you are my princess. You always have been, and I love you beyond words. Do you hear me?”
    On the other end of the line…silence.
    “Carly?”
    “I hear you. Dad, is everything okay?”
    “Yes. I just…” He shut his eyes, tears streaming down his face. “I need you to know how I feel about you. How I’ve always felt. Those summers up in Wisconsin with you and your mother on Lake Rooney…best times of my life. I would give all the treasure in the world to go back there for a single day. I’m so proud of you, Carly.”
    Now, he could hear her crying.
    “Ten seconds,” the man said.
    “I have to go now, sweetheart.”
    “I want to see you, Dad. I’ll be in Chicago week after next.”
    “I’d like that very much. I’m sorry, Carly. I’m so sorry.”
    “Dad, are you sure everything’s—”
    He felt the phone get snatched away from his ear.
    Marquette wiped his eyes, stared for a moment across the harbor.
    When he looked back at the man, he said, “I should’ve done that a long time ago.”
    “But you did it. There were people in my life, now long since gone, that I can never have a conversation like that with. Count yourself lucky.”
    But Marquette didn’t feel lucky. He felt devastated.
    “It’s time, Reggie. Roll up the sleeve of your left arm.”
    Marquette’s fingers trembled so badly that he fumbled with the button on his cuff for thirty seconds before he got it undone.
    “Are you strictly a scholar or is there some real belief behind your work?” the man asked as Marquette slowly rolled up the sleeve of the cream button-down shirt his wife had given him the Christmas before last.
    “I don’t know.”
    “I’ve studied quite a bit of Dante’s masterpiece myself. It fascinates me. I have a question for you.”
    “Yes?”
    “To which circle of hell will you be taken?”
    Marquette stared into the man’s black eyes—such terrifying emptiness.
    “The fifth circle.”
    “Anger?”
    “It’s the root of all my failings.”
    “You’re a very honest man, Reggie.”
    The rolled sleeve was above his elbow now, and the man said, “That’s fine. Turn your arm over. Let me see your veins.”
    Marquette hesitated, but only for a second.
    “Are you feeling the urge to resist?”
    “Of course I am. This is my life you’re taking.”
    “I understand that as long as you understand what’s behind the black curtain. If you want to go out screaming and in agony, the option is there.”
    “I don’t want that.”
    The man with long, black hair held the syringe, his finger on the plunger, and moved it toward the pale underside of Marquette’s forearm.
    “Try to keep it steady.”
    Marquette grabbed his wrist to keep his arm from shaking, watched the needle enter a periwinkle vein with a stinging pinch.
    “Speedy travels, brother,” the man said, and his thumb depressed the plunger.
    When he’d shot the full load into Marquette’s system, he tugged out the needle and leaned back in his seat.
    Marquette sat with his palms on his knees.
    Waiting.
    Heart racing.
    Lines of icy sweat trilling down his sides.
    He didn’t feel anything yet.
    Out the window, he saw a couple in their thirties walking along the shore with two small children.
    An old man sitting on a bench twenty yards away, smoking a cigar.
    A half-mile out—a sailboat gliding shoreward.
    He whispered the names of his wife and his daughter, and then it hit him—like someone had dangled his beating heart over the fast lane of an interstate and a sixteen-wheeler had slammed