Storm Prey by John Sandford Read Free Book Online Page A

alone out of Bakersfield, up through the mountains, straddling his BMW, wind scouring his shaved scalp, sand spitting off the goggles, slipstream pulling at his leathers; and then down the other side, in the night, toward the lights of Tehachapi, then down, down some more and boom! out into the desert, running like a streak of steel lightning past the town of Mojave, blowing through Barstow to the 15, then up the 15 all the way to the lights of Vegas, coming out there at dawn with the lights on the horizon, the losers heading back to LA in the opposite lane ...
    Pulling up to the city limits, getting gas, sitting there with the BMW turning over like silk, and then boom! back down into the desert, the BMW hanging at 120, the white faces of the people in their Audis and Benzes and Mustangs, like ghosts, staring out at the demon who whipped by them in the dawn's early light ...
    The ride was the thing. The world slipped away--work, history, memory, dreams, everything--until he was nothing more than a piece of the unconscious landscape, but moving fast, a complex of nerves and guts and balls, bone and muscle and reaction.
    And he dreamed of sitting up on a high roof in Bakersfield and looking out over the town, the roofscape, the palm trees and mountains, the hot dry wind in his face. Sitting up there, it felt like something might be possible. Then you'd smell the tar, and realize it wasn't.
    And he dreamed of the men he'd killed, their faces when he pulled the trigger. The BMW had come from one of them. He'd put the shotgun to the man's head as he signed the papers, whining and pleading and peeing himself, and when the papers were in Cappy's pocket, boom! another one bites the dust. The Mojave was littered with their bones.
    He'd killed them without a flicker of a doubt, without a shred of pity, and enjoyed the nightly reruns ...

    SOMETIME IN THE early morning, the Minnesota cold got to him, and he stirred in his sleep. Eventually he surfaced, groaned and rolled over, the images of California dying like a match flame in a breeze. He'd kicked off the crappy acrylon blankets, and the winter had snuck through the ill-fitting windows, into the bed. He'd unconsciously pulled himself into a fetal position, and now the muscles of his back and neck cramped up like fists.
    He groaned again and rolled over and straightened out, his back muscles aching, pulled the blankets up to his chin, and listened: too quiet. Probably snowing again. Snow muffled the sounds of the highway, of the neighbors. He caught sight of the alarm clock. Nine o'clock. He'd been asleep since six, after a three-day run on methamphetamine and maybe a little cocaine, and work; they were all mixed up in his mind, and he couldn't remember.
    He was still tired. Didn't want to get up, but he swung his feet over the side of the bed, found the pack of Camels, lit one in the dim light that came through the window shade. Sat and smoked it down to his fingers, stubbed it out and trudged to the bathroom, the old cold floorboards flexing under his feet, the room smelling of tobacco and crumbling plaster and peeling wallpaper.

    THE ONLY bathroom light was a single bulb with a pull string. Cappy pulled on it, and looked at his face in the medicine cabinet mirror. Picked up some new lines, he thought. He was developing a dusty look, with a slash from the corner of his nose down toward his chin. Didn't bother him; he wasn't long for this world.
    Today was his birthday, he thought. One more year and he could legally buy a drink.
    He was twenty years old, on this cold winter morning in St. Paul Park.

    AFTER COMING BACK to Minnesota, he'd stopped in his home-town, looked around. Nothing there for him. He looked so different than he had in junior high, that it wasn't likely that even his father would recognize him.
    But one guy had. A kid he'd grown up with, named John Loew. Loew had come into the SuperAmerica as Cappy was walking out. Cappy had recognized him, but kept going, and then