[Oxrun Station] The Last Call of Mourning Read Free Page A

brokerage firms, doctors . . . sure signs, she thought, that the Station was different, reasonably wealthy and reasonably content. Those who did not live beyond the park lived in the village itself in Victorians and New England Colonials and offsprings of both.
    Quietly. Peacefully. Aware of the world, and keeping it distant.
    Between High Street and Steuben, then, she pulled into a vacant space at the curb, switched off the ignition and rolled down the window. She twisted to rest her arms on the door, her chin tucked into an elbow as her gaze swept in from the corner, from The Smoke Shop, Anderson's Shoes, The Melody Shop, Bartlett's Toys to ... a dark-faced store whose plate-glass windows had been carefully frosted so no one could see inside.
    Cyd grinned.
    A favorite place. Her secret place soon to be baptized.
    A pleasant soft sigh, and she gathered up her purse, hung the strap over her shoulder and opened the door. Slipped out. Closed the door with a push of her hip and sidled until she was leaning back against the front fender. Kicked back with one boot and struck the hubcap gently. A car passed and sprayed her, but she scarcely noticed.
    A favorite place.
    A secret place.
    Her smile shattered suddenly when she looked up, looked left, saw a huge grey limousine bearing down on her rapidly, its side barely clearing the other parked cars. From somewhere behind her a woman screamed. From somewhere inside her an order screamed, but she could not move. And could not look away— from the teeth of the chromed grille or the windshield's blind face that reflected the streetlamps in kaleidoscopic nightmare.
    She had half turned to run when two hands suddenly gripped her shoulders, lifted her up and back and across the hood.
    The limousine streaked on without slowing down, took the first corner shrieking, was gone, and it was silent.
    Slowly, then, she was helped to the sidewalk where she grabbed at the man's arms to steady herself before shaking loose and slumping against her car.
    "You know something," he said, his hands loose on his hips, "if that had been me, it would have been a beer truck, and it would have hit me."
    "Luck of the Yarrows," she said, trying to grin, trying not to give way to the trembling inside her. "Ed Grange, damnit, if I didn't know better I'd swear you set that up."
    "You're welcome," he said with a half-smile. "Any time."
    He was not much taller than she, and not much heavier, but his face was far less velvet, much more stone. Myrtle called it a rugged sort of handsome; Cyd called it uninspired. His nose was too large, his chin too perfectly squared, his cheekbones too high, his hair too blond . . . and the smile widening to a grin was too arrogant by far. She would have said more, but her legs abruptly refused to hold her any longer, and she did not protest when he took her arm and stared at her with black eyes narrowed with concern.
    "Trust me," she said. "I won't die on you."
    Several pedestrians had passed nearby, and Ed turned to them and waved them away with a professional smile. They moved, reluctantly, their heads a degree behind the direction of their feet.
    Cyd, fighting a conflict of nausea and dizziness, barely resisted the urge to stick out her tongue.
    "The cops," he said then, not really a question.
    "No, I don't think so. It's too late, he's gone."
    "Well . . . don't you think you at least owe me a drink?"
    She wiped a hand over her face, tugged at the handbag's strap and stood away from the car. "Is that what knights are getting these days?"
    Ed shrugged. Then stared at her in frank admiration. "I think, if that had been me, I'd be on the ground in a puddle waiting for a doc."
    "I told you," she said, taking his arm. "The luck of the Yarrows."
    "You sure you're all right?"
    "Edwin Grange, stop fussing!"
    "I'll stop fussing when you stop pretending."
    She looked back at her car, saw in a moment she could not stop her body trapped between her car and the Greybeast, spun around and dropped,