Nightrunners Read Free Page A

her gently on the hip. She came quick-awake with the same wild-eyed stare that had been assaulting him every morning for the past month. It made him think of an animal that had been caged and antagonized by man.
    He smiled with effort. "What do you think?"
    Cataracts of dreadful memory fell from her eyes. Her face softened. She leaned forward, rested her arms on the front seat and looked at the house.
    "Big," she said.
    Montgomery tried not to let his feelings show, but he was devastated. Becky's face disturbed him, as it had for some time now. Something alien had moved in behind the flesh. She looked more like thirty-five than twenty-five. Her hair, normally well brushed and luster brown, hung to her sagging shoulders like a dead hope. Her once-sharp features seemed curbed by swollen flesh. But the eyes were the worst. There were times when they actually frightened him.
    Becky put her hands in her lap, left hand folded over the right. A psychiatrist would say Becky was holding her hands over her privates like that because of the rape.
    And goddamnit, they would be right.
    "Becky?"
    "Huh . . . Sorry, my mind was elsewhere."
    On your back with a rapist astride, perhaps. A cold, sharp knife at your throat?
    Was that where it was?
    God, poor baby.
    He reached over the seat and took her hand. There was a slight, reflexive pull on her part, and her fingers felt like frozen metal pipes to his touch. He let go of her and got out of the car.
    She opened her door and he said, "Wait a minute. I'll unlock it."
    He walked to the cabin and used the key Dean had given him. Inside it was musty and warm. Quite a contrast from the cool rain on his neck.
    Feeling along the wall, he found the light switch, flicked it on.
    Redwood walls and soft, rust-colored carpets were revealed. There was very little furniture, but what was there was simple and attractive: a couch, two stuffed chairs, a coffee table, and to his right, a bar and pantries. A few stools. Beyond that, through a doorless, wide opening, was a kitchen. Porcelain winked from the darkness there.
    He walked into the kitchen and turned on the light. The kitchen was large. About half the size of their apartment, it seemed.
    He walked back through the living room and looked in the bathroom. Very nice.
    Bright blue tile with matching walls and shower curtain.
    The bedroom was cozy and well decorated too. The second bathroom was still in the process of construction. Hammers, nails and all manner of tools were strewn about.
    Sheets of paneling leaned against the wall and there were two-by-fours on the floor.
    "You'll just have to shut the door and not look in there," Eva had said. "Dean and I just work on the place summers, so it lacks some being finished."
    Montgomery went back to the door and waved Becky inside.
    Sure, he thought. Come on in. Your big protector has scoped it out.
    Well, where were you when your wife was being raped, big protector?
    Attending a nice, comfortable sociology conference in Houston, that's where.
    Subject: The Alienation of the Juvenile.
    Nice and ironic that. So ironic he wanted to cry. Again.
    And what would you have done had the cabin been occupied by a burglar, even a belligerent drunk, big protector?
    Crap your pants, maybe?
    Water your socks with urine?
    Would that be a good guess?
    Until recently, the totally nonviolent philosophy he had lived by had seemed logical. Very logical. Violence solves nothing.
    "No man ever did a designed injury to another without doing a greater to himself."
    That's what Henry Home had said. He had memorized the words in college, and made them his motto. His standard. The banner he carried before him.
    Ah, but had Henry Home's wife been raped? Had he experienced the boiling in his blood that such an act causes? Had he felt the festering of his soul? Had he dreamed of taking such molesters in his hands—suddenly made of steel, spiked all over and spring-loaded—
    and ripping, squeezing them apart like wet newspaper?
    He had.