Blood Trade: A Sean Coleman Thriller Read Free Page A

a moment on the wet ground before the van lurched forward and took
off quickly down the exit ramp.
    Andrew felt the spray from the tires slap his face. His chest tightened as he struggled
to comprehend the driver’s bizarre reaction. Though largely concealed in the darkness,
he knew that his reaction was clearly prompted by fear—fear of a confrontation with
the large man who was now nearly at the top of the hill behind him—the man who Andrew
was about to be standing with . . . alone.
    The loudening racket of hands and feet digging into frosty earth suddenly stopped.
Andrew could feel warm breath bearing down on the back of his tense neck as the rest
of his body turned ice cold. He swallowed before slowly turning his head to meet
the eyes of the person standing behind him.
    It wasn’t the man’s darkened eyes, however, that greeted Andrew’s line of sight.
It was his neck. The man was huge. He towered above Andrew, who had to lift his head
to meet the man’s opaque stare.
    Andrew stumbled backwards a step, digging the tip of his cane into the ground after
carving out some marginal distance between himself and the imposing stranger who
hovered much too close for comfort.
    The man didn’t say a word, which made Andrew nervous. He wasn’t sure if the man was
just trying to catch his breath or if he was evaluating Andrew’s reason for being
there. He had short, dark hair and appeared to be Caucasian and somewhere in his
mid- to late-twenties. His large biceps looked like upside-down tree trunks rooting
out from his receding shirtsleeves. Half a dozen earrings snaked up the sides of
each of his ears and a slightly larger ring looped through the bottom of his nose.
The man should have been freezing with his bare arms and thin shirt providing no
insulation from the brisk temperature, yet he didn’t seem too affected by the elements.
The strong, repellent stench of alcohol skimming the air perhaps explained why.
    Andrew forced himself to speak, hoping to assess whether the paralyzing anxiety that
rushed through his skin was truly warranted. “Are you okay?” he timidly asked.
    There was no reply. Only heavy breathing.
    Andrew opened his mouth, searching for something else to say when the man suddenly
spoke.
    “Yeah. . . I’m fine.” His voice was eerily deep and somewhat hoarse.
    Andrew didn’t feel any less on edge. “I saw the exhaust from your car,” he sputtered
out in a single breath. “From the road. I was worried you were hurt.”
    The man just glared. A moment agonized by before he nodded. He slowly turned to gaze
at the sight of his disabled automobile below. A couple of cars quickly sliced along
the interstate beyond it, with their headlights casting brief shadows along the overpass.
The man’s head twisted back to Andrew.
    “Who was that guy who drove off?”
    Andrew hadn’t been sure that the man had even seen the fleeing driver, but he apparently
had. Based on the driver’s abrupt departure, Andrew considered that the two men might
have been engaged in some kind of late night road rage. “Just some guy who also saw
your car,” he answered, thinking it to be the most harmless response. He took a second
before continuing. “He called the police to report the accident. Help should be here
soon.”
    The man’s body tensed at the word police . Andrew questioned whether he should have
offered up that information. He had done so as a way of incapacitating any hostile
intentions the man may have been weighing in his mind.
    The man’s stoic presence suddenly shifted to one of worry, even though he tried to
conceal the change.
    Andrew watched him clench his fists until his large arms trembled slightly.
    “Can you give me a ride to Denver?” he asked. “I need to get to Denver.”
    Andrew bit his lip and swallowed. Denver was over an hour’s drive south. The man
was trying to leave the scene. Andrew suspected, based on the alcohol he could smell,
that he was trying to avoid a DUI charge. He seemed