Depth Perception Read Free

Jennings."
    Sliding the ruined check into the pocket of her jeans, Nat began writing a second one. She had wanted anonymity for her return home. She should have known that was the one luxury she would never have in a town the size of Bellerose.
    "That's right," she said.
    The clerk and the pregnant woman exchanged - startled looks. Nat did her best to ignore them, but her hand was shaking when she tore off the check and handed it to the clerk. “Thanks for the gas."
    "If I'da known who you was, I never would have let you pump here," the clerk muttered.
    "Yeah, well, it's too late to' do anything about it now." Nat started toward the door.
    "Bitch," he said to her back.
    Nat felt the word as keenly as if he'd thrown a rock at her. She'd known her return would be met with hostility, but she wasn't going to let that keep her from doing what she'd come here to do. She'd waited three unbearable years for this moment.
    Once in her car, she pulled the note from her pocket and read it again.
     
    bad man take ricky. kill again. hurry.
     
    A chill passed through her as she studied the child-like scrawl. Aside from seeing that justice was done, there was nothing she could do for the ones who were already gone. Nat knew all too well that the dead could not be resurrected. But if she could prevent the death of a single child, whatever she faced in the coming days would be worth it.
    Staring at the note, she set a trembling finger beneath the words.
     
     kill again.
     
    "Not if I can help it, you son of a bitch," she whispered and jammed the car into gear.

 
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 2
     
    Melted asphalt stuck to the soles of Nick's boots like hot chewing gum as he made his way down the narrow road toward his father's farm. Stopping at the mailbox, he let the sight of the ancient live oaks and sweet gums arching over the white gravel lane sink into his brain. Growing up, he'd never seen the farm as anything except an endless hellhole of backbreaking work and a combat zone for him and his father to do battle. Now, even though the place was by no stretch of the imagination picturesque, there was a primal beauty in the way the hundred-year-old farm embraced the land.
    The lane curved like a capricious river for a quarter of a mile. When the old house loomed into view, it was like seeing an old friend to whom the years hadn't been kind. The two-story frame had a wide front porch and tall, narrow windows. It had been built at the turn of the century and added onto a dozen times over the decades, giving it the haphazard look of a structure that had been thrown together. The house had never been pretty. Neglect had made it downright unsightly. The wood siding that had once been as white as winter frost was weathered gray and warped from the elements. The windows were grimy and dull with neglect. The shingles on the roof curled like palsied fingers.
    Nick wondered if his father had fared any better. If the years had been kinder, the storms of his life gentler. If the Alzheimer's was as bad as Mike Pequinot had intimated.
    On either side of the lane, fields that had yielded a hundred years of. sugarcane and cotton stood barren and overgrown with weeds as tall as a man. The Ford tractor Dutch had bought used twenty years ago sat in the side yard at a cockeyed angle, its right rear tire as flat as the Louisiana countryside.
    "Home sweet home," he muttered as he took the concrete steps to the porch. The wooden planks creaked as he crossed to the front door. Setting the duffel at his feet, he knocked and tried hard to convince himself he'd' done the right thing by coming back.
    A minute ticked by before the door groaned and slowly
    opened. An. instant later he found himself looking at a man who was far too old to be his father. Eyes as dark as molasses swept down to his boots, then back to his face to glare. "T' as du gout." You've got a lot of nerve.
    The years had been as brutal to Dutch Bastille as they had the house. Eyes that had once been