Shadowfires Read Free

attention, and she shook her head-no.
    If she had ever loved Eric, that love had been ground to dust
beneath his heel. It had been a long time since
she'd even liked him. Moments before the accident, he'd
revealed a pure and terrifying hatred of her, so she supposed she
should have been utterly unmoved by his death. Yet she was badly
shaken. As she hugged herself and shivered, she was aware of a cold
emptiness within, a hollow sense of loss that she could not quite
understand. Not grief. Just… loss.
    She heard sirens in the distance.
    Gradually she regained control of her breathing.
    Her shivering grew less violent, though it did not stop
entirely.
    The sirens grew nearer, louder.
    She opened her eyes. The bright June sunshine no longer seemed
clean and fresh. The darkness of death had passed through the day,
and in its wake, the morning light had acquired a sour yellow cast
that reminded her more of sulfur than of honey.
    Red lights flashing, sirens dying, a paramedic van and a police
sedan approached along the northbound lanes.
    “Rachael?”
    She turned and saw Herbert Tuleman, Eric's personal attorney, with whom she had met only minutes ago. She had always liked Herb, and he had liked her as well. He was a grandfatherly man with bushy gray eyebrows that were now drawn together in a single bar.
    “One of my associates… returning to the office… saw it happen,”
Herbert said, “hurried up to tell me. My God.”
    Yes,” she said numbly.
    “My God, Rachael.”
    “Yes.”
    “It's too… crazy.
    “Yes.”
    “But…”
    “Yes,” she said.
    And she knew what Herbert was thinking. Within the past hour, she
had told them she would not fight for a large share of Eric's fortune but would settle for, proportionately, a pittance. Now, by virtue of the fact that Eric had no family and no children from his first marriage, the entire thirty million plus his currently unvalued stock in the company would almost certainly, by default, come into her sole possession.

----
2 SPOOKED
    The hot, dry air was filled with the crackle
of police radios, a metallic chorus of dispatchers' voices, and the smell of sun-softened asphalt.
    The paramedics could do nothing for Eric Leben except convey his
corpse to the city morgue, where it would lie in a refrigerated room
until the medical examiner had time to attend to it. Because Eric had
been killed in an accident, the law required an autopsy.
    “The body should be available for release in twenty-four hours,”
one of the policemen had told Rachael.
    While they had filled out a brief report, she had sat in the back
of one of the patrol cars. Now she was standing in the sun again.
    She no longer felt sick. Just numb.
    They loaded the draped cadaver into the van. In spots, the shroud
was dark with blood.
    Herbert Tuleman felt obliged to comfort Rachael and repeatedly
suggested that she return with him to his law office. “You need to
sit down, get a grip on yourself,” he said, one hand on her shoulder,
his kindly face wrinkled with concern.
    “I'm all right, Herb. Really, I am. Just a little shaken.”
    “Some cognac. That's what you need. I've got a bottle of Remy
Martin in the office bar.”
    “No, thank you. I guess
it'll be up to me to handle the funeral, so I've got things to attend
to.”
    The two paramedics closed the rear doors on the van and walked
unhurriedly to the front of the vehicle. No need for sirens and
flashing red emergency beacons. Speed would not help Eric now.
    Herb said, “If you
don't want brandy, then perhaps coffee. Or just come and sit with me for a while. I don't
think you should get behind a wheel right away.”
    Rachael touched his leathery cheek affectionately. He was a
weekend sailor, and his skin had been toughened and creased less by
age than by his time upon the sea. “I appreciate your concern. I
really do. But I'm fine. I'm almost ashamed of how well I'm taking it. I mean… I feel no grief at all.”
    He held her hand.
“Don't be ashamed. He was