Read Ghost Roll for Free Online Page A

until she was clear. The Impala whipped in a tight half-circle turn and then straightened out, heading for the highway and escape. Bell looked back at the Blazer. Deputy Mathers had tumbled from his vehicle and stood with his service revolver out in front of him, feet spread and knees bent, aiming for the Impala’s rear tires.
    â€œCharlie—no!” Bell cried out. As the car swept past her she’d seen two more faces, both in the back seat: Meagan and Jerry Emery. She didn’t want to take a chance on hurting the kids.
    The high-pitched twang of back-to-back gunshots made Bell flinch and wince, lifting her shoulders in a quick defensive hunch. But it wasn’t Mathers. The shots had come from the passenger side of the Impala. Bell saw Debbie draw the handgun back inside the window. The car continued on.
    â€œDamnation!” Mathers fumed. His left rear tire hissed and sank.
    As the Impala grinded away in a choking boil of exhaust fumes, Bell watched the dirty rectangle of the back windshield. She saw the face of the young boy. Jerry Emery. He must’ve been perched on his knees on the backseat, hanging on as the car rocked and spun. His sister was probably crouched on the floor, scared out of her mind.
    Bell felt a cold splash of recognition. The dream, she thought. The dream—I had it wrong. Not a house, but a car. The boy at the window in my dream—it’s not a window in a house, it’s the rear windshield of a car.
    She knew it was pointless, crazy, yet she stretched out her arm, hoping to show the boy that she would’ve helped him if she could. But he was already far out of reach, the heavy vehicle still bouncing wildly on its ruined springs as it flew down the road, separating itself from Acker’s Gap for good.
    Bell let her arm drop back down against her side. Mathers was on his radio, calling for backup to chase them, but it was too late. She knew that. The Emerys had escaped. They’d end up somewhere a long, long way from here, and they’d start all over again. They’d pick a fake business and hang out a shingle and sell their pills out the back door—until they were caught again, and then once again they’d pile everything in the car and go, go, go. Jerry and Meagan would be yanked from place to place throughout their childhood; chances were, they’d never know stability, or regularity, or the low-key luxury of having one day follow the next without agitation and disruption. A wretched, wretched childhood.
    But was it any crueler, Bell suddenly wondered, than the childhood Quentin Harless had given to Matt? Was the danger supplied by Trent and Debbie Emery really any worse than the stone-cold, loveless, melancholy childhood that Matt had suffered through? And how about her own childhood—a dark place filled with chaos and longing. How’d that one stack up?
    There were thoughts you weren’t supposed to think, but Bell was thinking them anyway: Maybe, in the end, it didn’t matter what kind of childhood you had. Maybe they were all bad, in their own ways. Nobody came out of it whole. But you have to keep fighting, she upbraided herself. You have to. The boy in the back of the car had seen her reaching for him. She was sure of it. And maybe, at some point in the difficult future that awaited him, he would remember this moment; he would remember that a stranger had put out her hand and tried to save him. Somebody gave a damn. And in the end, Bell believed, that might make a difference in his life. It had in hers.
    She couldn’t save every child. But she might just be able to save the next one. And that was why she stayed here, battling impossible odds, refusing to let the darkness win.
    She felt a hot pain in her shoulder, at the spot on which she’d slammed against the ground. She heard Mathers on his radio, yelling out the plate numbers—even though he knew, just as well as she did, that the Impala’s trunk surely was