Wildwood Road by Christopher Golden Read Free Book Online Page B

the heat of embarrassment. She looked down again at the wreck of her beautiful costume. A stray thought danced through her mind; she wondered what had become of the traditional half-mask she'd worn in front of her face for most of the night. At some point, she recalled having handed it to Michael, but somehow she doubted she would find it again.
    “No, I . . .” She met the policeman's gaze, and stiffened. Her first impression had been correct. He was handsome, a broad-shouldered mid-twenties guy with a square jaw darkened by permanent five o'clock shadow, and the kind of eyes that could melt a girl's heart. But what had brought her up short was the look in those eyes.
    He was pitying her.
    It made her feel small. The tickle in her stomach wasn't quite so ticklish anymore. She felt sick, but not so much that she would actually
be
sick.
    “I'm sorry. I don't. My purse is in the car”—
I think
—“I can get it.” She ducked back into the car before he could argue with her. Her headache sang a funeral dirge, and her stomach churned as she bent over.
    Michael was wide awake now. Or, at least, he seemed to be. There was something unspoken in his eyes. He looked almost stoned, but Michael had smoked pot exactly once in his life, so that was out of the question.
    “Jillian? Jilly, what—”
    The cop on the other side of the car wasn't as polite or as patient as the one Jillian had come to think of as
her
policeman. Michael's policeman slapped his open palm down on the roof of the car, making them both jump, then bent to glare in the window.
    “Sir, step out of the car now, please. Right now.”
    “Yeah,” Michael said. “Yes. Yeah, of course.” He slid over to the front passenger door and unlocked it.
    The policeman stood back, one hand resting on his holstered gun. Jillian didn't think Michael noticed that little detail, but it gave her an icier chill than the October wind. No, Michael wasn't noticing much. His expression was mystified. His eyes were wide, as though he had woken up to find himself lost in Oz. His hangover must have been even worse than hers, though how that could be she did not know. She wanted to scream at him, to hurl blame at him for putting her in this situation. Instead she just asked him to hand her purse back to her, and he did so.
    “I'll need your license and your registration, please,” Michael's policeman said curtly.
    Jillian stepped out of the car again, even as her husband got out on the other side. She pulled her wallet from her purse, then opened it and retrieved her license, handing it over. Her policeman glanced from the picture on the license to Jillian and then back again several times.
    “All right, Mrs. Dansky. Stay right there a minute, please.”
    He held on to her license as he made a circuit around the car. Jillian watched as he approached Michael and the other officer, and she realized that the two had separated them purposely. Probably just their usual procedure, but it made her feel even more isolated than she already had. Her policeman took Michael's license as well as the Volvo's registration, said something to his partner, and then started back to the police car. He slid behind the wheel; through the windshield, Jillian could see a gray silhouette as he picked up the handset for his radio. She had been stopped for speeding twice in her life, so she understood that he was checking to make sure the car belonged to them and that there were, God forbid, no warrants for her or Michael's arrest.
    An eternity seemed to pass.
    Her mouth felt full of cotton and there was a tight little knot in her belly. Though her hearing seemed dull, she caught some of the exchange between Michael and his policeman.
    “. . . very late,” Michael was saying, “and I was falling asleep behind the wheel. My wife had had a little too much to drink—”
    “What about you, Mr. Dansky?” the policeman asked, cut-the-bullshit in his tone. “You were nodding off at the wheel.”
    Michael