Read Badlands for Free Online Page B

Now that you have a bright yellow truck, what are you? The Lizard Queen ?”
    She paused and smiled at him. “You aren’t exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, are you, Ronald?”
    His breathing pattern was becoming more rapid. The long wheeze had morphed into a series of quick whistles, but he didn’t seem to be able to hear himself. Although his expression was frozen in place, his ears had reddened. And she could see a tiny pearl necklace of perspiration on his scalp beneath his dark hair.
    â€œIt couldn’t have been easy growing up in that house with no father. And your mother, before she got obese and obsessive, couldn’t really see any value in you. Especially not compared to your sister JoBeth, God rest her soul.”
    Cassie held out her right hand, palm up and gestured to it. “Here we have JoBeth: two-sport all-state athlete, honor roll, Future Farmers of America award winner. She’s athletic, attractive, and smart. She was even the homecoming queen. Then she joined the U.S. Marines and went overseas to Kuwait. She was a hero. And just like my husband, she was killed in action. Your mother kept the folded flag they sent her on the wall, right next to JoBeth’s trophies. She was proud of JoBeth, and who wouldn’t be?”
    Cassie raised her left hand and expelled a puff of breath as she looked at it. “And here we have Ronald. Dull, overweight, held back in the third grade. The only physical activity he participated in was masturbating in his bedroom. Picked up for DWI the week before he planned to join the army, so even they wouldn’t take him. He took one minimum-wage job after the other and had to come home every night and look at that flag on the wall. He is a forty-five-year-old man who still lives at home with his mother.”
    She paused and nodded to her right hand and said, “Winner.” Then to her left, “Loser.”
    Cassie lowered her hands to the tabletop and shook her head as if she was disappointed in him.
    â€œAll those women you tortured and killed, Ronald, just to get back at your mother and sister. It’s pathetic when you think about it—”
    He exploded across the table and screamed, “ You fat fucking bitch!” before she had time to react. His huge manacled hands were on her throat, his thumbs crushing her windpipe. She tried to pry them off but he was twice as strong and she couldn’t break his grip.
    Cassie rose in an attempt to twist away, and she impulsively kicked at him but her toe bounced off the table leg. The pressure on her throat was unbelievable and the sight of his grimacing face darkened and faded out of her sight like a curtain being drawn across a window.
    Footfalls, like cascading thunder, echoed from the hallway.
    She never heard the door burst open.

 
    CHAPTER FOUR
    Grimstad
    T-LOCK WAS pacing like a caged panther on the inside of the dirty glass storm door when Kyle got home after school. Kyle climbed off his bike and leaned it against the old washing machine on the side of the house. He used to keep his bike in the front but there had been so many stories of bike thefts recently that he used the new location. The washer had been there for a year. Kyle’s mom was always asking T-Lock to take it away to the dump or at least lock it closed with a chain so no little kids could crawl inside and die. Neither had been done.
    T-Lock opened the side door and leaned out, his eyes bulging. He glanced left and right down the block, then growled, “You, get in here. Now. ”
    Kyle nodded. He knew he should be scared. T-Lock could be a scary guy and Kyle knew he must be in trouble for something.
    Kyle simply stared at the man. He considered turning his bike around and riding away—but where?
    T-Lock’s real name was Tracy Andersen and he was a roofer. That’s what he told people who asked what he did. He said he got the name “T-Lock” because of the shingles he