The Straw Men by Michael Marshall Read Free Book Online Page B

back from the main part of the inn. She was carrying something in one hand. He got out of the car. It was much colder now, the sky leaden. Snow.
    “Jesus,” she said, her breath clouding around her face. “You weren’t kidding. Food on a need-to-eat basis only. I got this though.” She held up a bottle of Irish whiskey. “Said it was needed in evidence.”
    “I don’t really drink anymore,” he said.
    “Well, I do,” she said. “You can sit and watch.” She opened the door and retrieved the file. Zandt caught her checking its position on the floor, as if to see whether he’d taken a look in her absence.
    “Nina, why are you here?”
    “Come to save you,” she said. “Welcome you back into the world.”
    “And if I don’t want to come back?”
    “You’re already back. You just don’t know it yet.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “John, it’s colder than a nun’s pants out here. Let’s get inside. I’m sure you can do your new thousand-yard stare just as effectively under a roof.”
    He was surprised into a grunt of laughter. “That’s kind of rude, isn’t it?”
    She shrugged. “You know the rules. You sleep with a woman, she’s got the right to be superior to you for the rest of your life.”
    “Even if she started it? And ended it?”
    “You fought tooth and nail on neither occasion, as I recall. Which of these rustic barns is your current abode?”
    He nodded toward his building and she marched off. After a moment in which he considered and rejected the notion of getting back in the car and driving away, he followed.

C HAPTER FOUR
    HE BUILT A FIRE while she sat in one of the threadbare armchairs, her feet on the coffee table. He was aware of her assaying the surroundings in the lamplight: the tastefully worn rugs, shabby chic furniture, paintings only a hotelier could love. The floorboards were painted creamy white, and a spray of local flowers sat perkily in a vase a few inches from Nina’s feet.
    “So what time’s Martha Stewart dropping by?”
    “Just as soon as you’ve gone,” he said, heading to the bathroom for glasses. “Me and her, it’s like an animal thing.”
    Nina smiled, and watched the kindling in the grate. The fire clicked and crackled, pleased to be wakened, ready to consume. It seemed like a long time since she’d seen a real fire. It reminded her of childhood vacations, and made her shiver.
    When Zandt returned she screwed the cap off the bottle and poured two measures. He stood a moment longer, as if still unwilling to commit himself to joining her, but then took the other chair. The room slowly began to warm.
    She held the tooth glass up to her lips with both hands, and looked at him across it. “So, John—how’ve you been?”
    He sat, staring straight ahead, and didn’t look at her.
    “Just tell me,” he said.
     
    THREE DAYS PREVIOUSLY , A girl called Sarah Becker had been sitting on a bench on 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica, California. She was listening to a minidisc, on a player she’d received for her fourteenth birthday. She had printed out a neat little label on the computer at home, and her name and address were stuck to the back of the player, fixed with invisible tape to prevent the ink from wearing off. While she’d hated to compromise the machine’s sleek brushed chrome, she disliked the idea of losing it even more. When the player was found, it emerged that the album she’d been listening to was Generation Terrorists , by a British band called the Manic Street Preachers. Except, as Sarah knew, you called them The Manics. The band wasn’t big at her school, which was one of the reasons she listened to them. Everybody else mooned over feisty pop princesses and insipid boy bands, or else bobbed their heads while some hip-hop yahoo bellowed last year’s slang over someone else’s tune from the safety of a walled compound in Malibu. Sarah preferred music that sounded as if, somewhere down the line, someone had meant