Read Dark Road for Free Online Page B

later,” Carey started.
    “I’ll send him to check in early. No problem.”
    Carey nodded, turned, and waved, and Marissa closed the door with a slightly uneasy feeling that the encounter hadn’t been entirely organic. Things had kind of always been that way with Carey but this just hadn’t felt right. At least in this case she hadn’t truly lied, she simply hadn’t told the whole truth—and after all, wasn’t that the best type of lie…the lie of omission?
    …
    About twenty minutes later, Dan got home and was about to show Marissa what he’d found.
    “What’s up?  Something’s eating at you. You have that look.” Dan said, after hugging his wife.
    “And so do you. You have got to learn to keep whatever it is under a little bit better lock and key than that or you’re going to blow the whole thing!” Marissa was only slightly kidding at this point. It was the first time she’d seen Dan really smile since…in several weeks.
    “Ok, I know, you have a point and I’m sorry. I’ll do better but you obviously have something on your mind, go ahead.” Dan’s smile was gone and he was growing concerned now.
    “Carey came by while you were gone, a little less than half an hour ago, I guess. He was making some noise about one of the boy’s arms hurting, but, well…” Marissa kind of trailed off and hugged herself, even though it was fairly warm in the house.
    “There was more to it, but you don’t know what, right?” Dan prompted.
    “Yeah, pretty much. It just didn’t feel right; it felt so phony…like he was trying to case the house from the front door.” Marissa looked around the living room that was still mostly cluttered with piles of clothes, blankets, toys, and odds-and-ends.
    “He never tried to push his way in or anything but he didn’t really try to hide the fact that he was looking over my shoulder into the house, either. I guess that bothers me more than just about anything.” Marissa looked at Dan and he could see a bit of fire in her eyes. “Who does he think he is to feel like he has the right to do that? It’s not right!”
    “Which is just another reason we need to get out of here now, while we still can.” Dan said. “I know what you mean about Carey ‘not feeling right’, though. I’ve been thinking about the morning I got the pistol from the Taylor’s safe and something about the encounter still just doesn’t feel right, but I don’t know what it is.”
    “Well, I can’t dwell on it anymore, and I promised I’d send you over early once you got home—but I want to see what you found since it obviously put you in a better mood. I’m guessing it wasn’t chocolate.”
    “No, sorry, it wasn’t chocolate. It was, however,” Dan pulled Wildwood Wisdom out of his backpack, “this!”
    Marissa stared at it for several seconds and then grabbed it and sat down on the couch. Then she looked around at the windows and got up and closed the blinds on the window across from the loveseat and sat down there. Unless someone made a concerted effort, and was obvious about it, they couldn’t look in and see what she was reading without being seen themselves.
    “I take it you’ve found a potential new favorite book?” Dan asked.
    “We’ll see; I won’t know until I finish it.” Marissa said with a smile as she looked up at her husband, the sorting forgotten for the time being.
    …
    Dan walked to the makeshift hospital after switching to his EMT backpack—one of three different backpacks he used daily. Carey was outside the house they were using as a hospital, talking to one of the neighborhood moms. Dan couldn’t remember her name but he thought her daughter had gotten sick drinking water directly from the river a month or so ago. The daughter was fine now, but he seemed to remember her having at least one other child.
    Carey saw Dan walking up, excused himself from the conversation, and made to intercept Dan before he could enter the house.
    “So, Dan, where were you