Hell on Wheels Read Free

elusive shadow. But somehow she sensed he was there…somewhere…
    Snapping a fast look over her shoulder, she rapidly scanned the faces of the pedestrians behind her. Nope. He wasn’t back there, either. Not that she’d ever seen him full-on, but she’d caught enough glimpses of him to know her elusive shadow wasn’t the middle-aged man caring the brown-bagged loaf of French bread, nor was he the black-and-yellow-rugby-jersey-wearing guy who—
    Yikes, who let him out of the house this morning? He looked like a giant bumblebee, and the fact that he was gazing through the front window of the flower shop momentarily overcame her mounting fear. She snorted a giggle. Then the baby-fine hairs on the back of her neck twanged a loud warning, freezing the laughter in her throat like it’d been hit with a harsh blast of dry ice.
    Crapola. Maybe she really was going crazy.
    She’d had that thought more than a time or two in the past three months, because it wasn’t like Jacksonville was a huge place. It wasn’t necessarily abnormal to see the same faces over and over again.
    “But that’s the whole problem now, isn’t it?” she muttered to herself.
    She’d never actually seen her elusive shadow’s face. Maybe if she had, maybe if she’d gotten the chance to look into the guy’s eyes, she wouldn’t be feeling this alarming sense of…pursuit.
    A sudden chill snaked down her rigid spine as her palms began to sweat. Her tight grip on the handles of the plastic grocery bags started slipping, and she adjusted her hold, hoisting her purse higher on her shoulder in process.
    Two more blocks…
    “Just two more blocks and then I’m home free,” she murmured, realizing by the quizzical look of the couple passing on her right that she was talking to herself again. That was another little eccentricity she’d picked up since Grigg’s death. The whole going-crazy thing was starting to look more and more likely.
    She trained her eyes on the bright pink flowers of the potted begonia bushes positioned in front of her condo building—the ones the amiable Mrs. Alexander from 3C had planted just last week.
    Just one more block. Just one more block and then she could throw on her front door’s chain lock, twist the dead bolt and finally take a normal breath.
    She was so focused on those potted plants and the sanctuary they promised, she didn’t see the hulking shadow lunge out at her from the deep, murky alley.
    It wasn’t until the first brutal, bruising jerk of her purse strap against her shoulder that she realized she might be in serious trouble. The second hard yank had her spinning around like a top, sending her shopping bags flying out of her hands, their contents scattering in the busy street like edible confetti.
    A maroon sedan mowed over her sack of pecans, the shells exploding in a series of loud rat-a-tat-tats frighteningly similar to the sound of automatic gunfire.
    “Hey!” someone yelled. “He’s trying to mug her!”
    That was enough to snap her out of her momentary shock, and she grabbed hold of her purse’s inch-wide leather strap, pulling with everything she had. According to every self-defense guru on the planet, she should just let go. A purse wasn’t worth her life. But this particular Coach satchel had been a gift from Grigg…
    The guy clutching her purse in his meaty fist was built like a German Panzer, all brutal, bulging muscles and non-existent neck supporting a ski mask-covered face. He easily could’ve ripped her little Coach from her desperate grasp if he hadn’t been simultaneously trying to fend off the strangely heroic man beating him about the head and shoulders with a hard loaf of French bread.
    “Call the police!” Mr. French Bread bellowed, landing blow after blow until the loaf began to disintegrate and the smell of fresh-baked bread filled the humid air.
    That was just the impetus needed to yank the frozen, slack-jawed onlookers into action. As Ali and Mr. French Bread wrestled