Wild Ride Read Free Page B

apart, then swooping down into the curves. Ethan watched in silence until the cars were slowly crawling up toward the pinnacle of the last loop, the dragon tunnel, at least a hundred feet into the air, the wooden struts supporting the track shivering and creaking in protest. The Dragon wouldn’t set any records for height. Or length. Or safety, Ethan thought, mesmerized by the creaking cars that sounded like they were going to collapse at any second. Perhaps they shouldn’t be running it any more than they had to.
    â€œGus? Maybe—”
    Gus waved him off, walked to the end of the platform, and unhooked the chain that closed off the service walkway. He stepped onto the walkway and then leaned over, putting the right side of his head right on top of one of the rails.
    â€œGeez, Gus, that’s dangerous,” Ethan said, but the old man couldn’t hear him, focused on the vibration of the coaster. Ethan walked over and stood on the walkway, prepared to snatch Gus out of the way if the old man didn’t move before the Dragon came home.
    The coaster went through the tunnel and roared down, racing into the high-bank corkscrew turn called the Dragon’s Tail. The cars slammed back and forth on the rails and then splashed through the shallow water at the bottom toward the long straightaway leading back to the platform, and Gus stood up as it came in, his face grim in the light from the control booth.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” Ethan asked, worried the old man was going to have a heart attack.
    â€œOnly four rattles.” Gus headed back to the control booth, and Ethan followed close behind.
    The Dragon pulled up to the platform, and Gus threw the lever, stopping it. The bars that kept people from falling out automatically lifted. He threw switches, powering down the ride, turning off the thousands of lights that lined the edge of the tracks, the pinpoint reflections in the water flashing out and leaving the lake lifeless. The park plunged back into darkness, a few streetlamps dotted here and there casting lonely cones of orange light through Glenda’s cellophane.
    Ethan put his hand on Gus’s shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go back to the trailers—”
    He stopped, suddenly alert.
    Nineteen years of Special Operations duty in the Army and three-plus years in combat: no amount of alcohol could wash those instincts away. Ethan fumbled for the pistol, finally pulling it out, the grip sweaty in his left hand. He blinked, trying to focus, searching back and forth, the muzzle of the gun following his eyes as he tried to see into the dark shadows. He grabbed Gus’s arm. “Come on
now
,” he said, and saw Gus looking at his chest, frowning.
    He looked down and saw the tiny red dot of an infrared laser sight.
    Oh, crap
, he thought, and then the round hit him.

2
    M ab had let Glenda steer her to the Dream Cream and sit her down on one of the pink leather stools at the counter. She really wanted to keep going to the door to the back hall—one short flight up to her bed in Cindy’s apartment and solitude and silence—but she was feeling dizzy and her head hurt and she’d read something once about not falling asleep with a concussion. Also, she needed to find out what had hit her. If the damn kids from the nearby college were pulling a prank with the iron FunFun statue at the gate that she’d spent eighty hours restoring, heads were going to roll.
    She touched the back of her own head gingerly. It hurt.
    â€œLet me get you a cold cloth,” Glenda said. “You look kind of . . . gory.”
    â€œThank you.” Mab put her hat on the counter. The Formica was covered in retro pink swirls, so she stopped looking at it and tried to focus on the mirrored wall behind it, with its glass shelves of sundae dishes and milk shake glasses and the blackboard where Cindy wrote down the flavors for the day.
    Glenda flipped up part of