Deadly Thyme Read Free Page B

keep happening?
    “ It is your eternal punishment before your eternal punishment.”
    No! It must be that the girl was his salvation. But could she save him —save him from … from being overwhelmed with the terrible tortures that pressed against his life at every turn, the burning hell that seared with every breath? Could she bring back his life with Cecil?
    He didn ’t want to kill the girl. He wasn’t like that, not really. He only wanted the peace he’d had when he was young. Before his mother ruined his life.
    The girl ’s mother would surely come to save her. She would come and he would make her tell him what she was supposed to tell him. She would say it.
    He didn ’t want to kill the girl. Death was messy and he hated messy. Her living blood would take the place of the blood he couldn’t have any more. But the child’s mother—he would have to kill the woman after she said what needed to be said.
    He used an old cord to bind the girl ’s hands and feet so there would be no mistakes. After securing her, he climbed back into the car.
    “ What’s wrong with you, Chubby? Why didn’t you do that earlier?”
    Charles jerked. He muttered, “Whatever I do, it ’s useless!” With barely restrained anger, he answered, “I didn’t carry string with me to the beach, Mummy.”
    Propping his head on the steering wheel, he moaned, “Crying peace. When there is no peace.” He lifted his eyes, seeing nothing.
    The girl had recognized his proclivity, fascinated as he had become with her mother. His world had begun unraveling when he spotted the woman at the fete and knew her for what she really was. His mother had come back. This time he would be more thorough, wringing the confession from her before he killed her a second time.
    He ducked, holding his hands up like a shield. “Shhhh. Mother, don ’t say it. I know I should have gotten it right the first time. I never did anything right, is what you always say. But I have changed, you’ll see.”
    The asthmatic wheezing in his head quieted. He could feel her still there, watching. Oh God! Perspiration soaked his shirt. He struggled out of his coat and glanced at his watch. Forty-three minutes since he’d first spotted the girl. The white motorcar hadn’t come after him. It was a reprieve.
    After a few moments, he reversed the old car and drove back up onto the blacktop.
     

     
    The dark car gone and away, Jon Graham sat, dazed. Why hadn’t the other motorist stopped? Must have been drinking and driving—on a Sunday morning and all. Pushing his car door open, he set his feet squarely into a trough of liquid black mud. He leaned back and rubbed away the tiredness from five hours of driving. He could easily have gone over the side of the cliff, never to be seen again. There likely wasn’t anyone about to hear the gut-wrenching scrape of his sweet little car tear through the gorse and fly into space to be squashed on the rocks below. He was thankful.
    He picked his way out of the mud and shook what he could off his shoes so he wouldn ’t feel weighted down. He detailed what injury his car had sustained. A smear of purplish paint from the crash-derby car was etched into a dent along one fender. A razor line of silver sliced through to bare metal. It could be easily remedied. He walked around to the hedgerow side. There was a dent the size of an orange and quite a few scratches from bracken. Fortunately the impact was not great enough to cause his air bags to deploy. That would have required immediate assistance.
    He ’d pinched, scraped and sacrificed to purchase this, his first car, a year ago. Though not a new car, it had been so well kept as to be beautiful. Here he’d been driving in London, with its racecar taxi-drivers, without a scratch. And then the first day in peaceful Cornwall and BOOM!
    He looked around for CCTV possibilities and saw none, so the accident wouldn ’t have been recorded. The sun was under a misconception of cloud but still made