Read Hour of the Hunter for Free Online Page A

I've never been here before. What did you call it, Picacho Peak? It looks steep. Do people climb it?"
    "All the time. I grew up around here. The mountain's one of my favorite places. Actually, there's a rest area partway up. We could make a pit stop there if you can spare the time."
    "Sure," he said agreeably. "I'd like that."
    The parking lot at the rest area was totally deserted.
    A searing, hot wind blew down off the mountain and into their faces when they got out of the car. While the woman went to use the rest room, Andrew retrieved two more beers from the cooler and then sauntered over to a shaded picnic table. Across the desert came the whine of tires as vehicles sped along the Interstate several hundred yards away, but none of them slowed or stopped. Closer at hand there was no sign of life.
    He took a leisurely sip from his second beer in six years.
    The alcohol was making him a little giddy, giving him a slight but pleasant buzz. He sat with his back against the warm concrete picnic tabletop and thought about taking her right there in the heat, in broad daylight, as it were.
    That excited him almost beyond bearing, but there was no sense in being stupid. Carlisle looked around. At one end of the rest area, he saw a small playground. Beyond it, a trail wound off up the mountain.
    When the woman emerged from the rest room, Carlisle was gratified to see that she had applied a fresh coat of vivid red lipstick. He looked forward to the taste of it, anticipating how it would feel to crush those full lips against his own. He wondered if cosmetic companies had ever considered naming their lipsticks with his kind of flavors---Yielding Woman" would be a good one or maybe "Blood Red."
    Maybe he could get a job writing advertising copy.
    As she came walking toward him. he again noticed the deep tan on her legs and the easy, sensuous sway of her generous hips. Not unaware of her effect on him, she seemed, in fact, to enjoy it.
    He handed her a beer, which he'd already opened. "Ever make any money on the side?" he asked.
    She smiled coquettishly over the top of the can, but she made no movement away from him. He caught a whiff of freshened perfume with its hint of tacit agreement. "That depends on what you have in mind," she said. "Your place or mine?"
    He almost choked. She was brazen as hell. Is that what had happened to women in the six-and-a-half years since 1968 when they'd locked him up?
    Was that what "Women's Lib" was all about? A little reluctance might have been nice.
    Carlisle liked reluctance in his women. Sex was always far more interesting when the woman had to give more than she intended. This broad, for instance, thought she was in complete control. He'd be only too happy to show her otherwise.
    "Right here," he said, motioning toward the picnic table behind them.
    She looked at him incredulously. "Right here? In the rest area? In this heat? What if somebody comes?"
    Somebody'll come, he thought. "A quickie," he said, ashamed that it sounded so much like begging.
    She laughed then. Something about him struck her as funny. The muscles along his jawline tightened with sudden anger.
    "Sixty-five," she said easily. "It'd be more if we had to rent a room.
    Let me see the money first."
    Sixty-five? he thought. What kind of price was that for a piece of ass? But he counted out the bills slowly and deliberately, giving himself time to savor the sensation. He studied the fine lines of her upturned palm as he placed the money in her hand. Would a fortune-teller have been able to read the lifeline etched there and tell what was about to happen?
    She took the money from him, folded it in quarters, and stuffed the wad of bills into the tight hip pocket of her shorts. "You mean right here on the table?" she asked.
    "How about down the path," he suggested lamely, as though stricken with a sudden case of shyness. "Maybe far enough to be out of sight of the parking lot."
    She laughed again. "So you are bashful after all," she