Turned to Stone by Jorge Magano Read Free Book Online Page B

Instead, Jaime was very much alive. He was not frozen, although he was weary, his breathing was agitated, and his brow dripped with sweat as if he’d just run a five-thousand meter race.
    “How . . . ?” she stammered. She had exchanged her black dress for camouflage pants and a fleece jacket, but despite her change of attire and shocked expression, Jaime thought she still looked dazzling. “It’s impossible!”
    “Nothing’s impossible,” he said, pointing the gun to direct her out of the kitchen.
    The sun had yet to rise when Jaime, standing outside on the sidewalk, noticed the white van parked in front of the hotel entrance, its engine still running. He pushed Sandra inside and climbed into the driver’s seat.
    “Where are we going?” Sandra asked as he put the vehicle in gear and drove toward the center of town.
    Jaime waited a few seconds before responding. He hadn’t bothered to tie her up, assuming she wouldn’t dare do anything stupid while the van was in motion. He glanced over and saw her gripping the seat, her knuckles white and eyes wide open.
    “Where are we going, you ask?” Jaime didn’t know the answer to the question himself. Then it came to him. It was a crazy idea, but there could be no better way to accomplish what he intended. “How about we stick to the plan?”
    “The plan? What plan?”
    “Your plan. Hold on tight. Next stop, Osma Castle.” A triumphant smile spread across his face. “I’ll just need to make one small change. It turns out that the person who will be found dead won’t be a homeless man. It’ll be a homeless woman.”

6

    They sped past the cathedral and crossed the River Ucero, leaving behind the town and its sleeping inhabitants. Jaime eased his foot off the gas only when he saw the lights of two vehicles approaching from the opposite direction. As the cars passed, he saw they were filled with young people returning from a night out, and they saluted him with a honk of the horn. He returned the gesture, adrenaline flowing through his veins and warming his body, a feeling more welcome to him than anything else in the world.
    “How did you do it?” Sandra asked.
    Jaime kept his eyes on the road, which was still illuminated by streetlights. Ahead, the castle ruins were silhouetted against the dark sky. “It’s a trick of the human body: if you exercise, you keep warm.”
    “What did you do?” Her tone was mocking. “Sit-ups?”
    “Oh, much better than that: I built my own weightlifting bench and used boxes as weights.”
    Jaime stopped along the riverbank and then, still clutching the pistol, he hauled Sandra out of the van. He gestured to her to start walking in front of him. It didn’t seem like a good idea to have the discussion inside the vehicle, in case a passing driver glanced inside and noticed a haggard-looking man pointing a weapon at a woman. The hilltop, however, was the perfect spot for what he had in mind.
    They began to climb the promontory upon which the eighth-century castle had been built. Floodlights illuminated the crumbling remains of the structure that had played a crucial role in a battle between Christians and Moors waged eleven centuries earlier. Jaime thought about all the people who had fought and died in that place, and it amused him to think that more than a thousand years later he’d narrowly escaped joining them. But why? It looked like he was about to find out.
    He and Sandra entered through a great collapsed stone archway and into the small open space that formed the main body of the castle’s structure. The smell of urine on the ground made the site an unpleasant place to linger, but Jaime already knew this would be no friendly chat. “Okay,” he said to Sandra. “So what are you going to tell me about this Medusa?”
    “I don’t know anything. My job was to find out what you knew. Now I see we were mistaken about you.”
    “You don’t say. But who was mistaken?”
    “I can’t tell you that. It’s a secret