Read One Summer for Free Online

been dreadful to merit such a reaction on the part of Tylerville’s usually laid-back police force.
    “Keep fightin’, scumbag, and I might just get to blow a hole through your thick skull yet today.”
    This threat, drawled by Greg Skaggs, roused Rachel from her momentary disbelief. Whatever Johnny was or was not, she was not going to watch him get shot before her eyes.
    “What in the name of heaven is going on here?” she demanded, stepping forward.
    Chief Wheatley, his officers, Ben, and Olivia all looked up at the same time.
    “Rachel, there just wasn’t anything I could do!” Olivia wailed. “I was already real nervous because that Johnny Harris had come into the store when Ben had promised me that he never would while I was here, and then Mr. Edwards came in and I just knew there’d be trouble, andthere was! There was an awful fight, with them tumblin’ all over the place and chokin’ and punchin’ each other, and I called the police, and a good thing, too! That Johnny Harris smashed Mr. Edwards in the throat with his fist and knocked him unconscious. It’s a wonder it didn’t kill him!”
    “Apparently Carl heard that Harris was here. He came looking for him, and he found him. I told you that hiring Harris was a mistake, and you see how right I was. He hasn’t been here more than a couple of hours, and look what’s happened.” Ben gestured to the group on the ground. “They tore the heck out of the store, fighting. Look at this mess!”
    Rachel looked. Paint cans, brushes, rollers, and color charts littered the floor from an overturned display. One can had burst open, spilling bright scarlet enamel across the black and white tile. A plastic bin that had once contained a huge assortment of nuts and bolts lay on its side, its contents scattered everywhere. Wild birdseed that had been stored in a large metal trash can made a gritty carpet underfoot. The can itself, now badly dented, rested against the foot of the wooden counter. From the look of it, it had been thrown at someone.
    “You should’ve checked with me before you did anything so all-fired foolish as giving Harris a job, Rachel,” said Chief Wheatley. “Anyone with a lick of sense would have foreseen that the Edwards boys would be after him the minute he hit town. Hell, I can’t blame ’em, though I’ll uphold the law as I’m bound. It ain’t right that Carl here’s sister’s dead and her killer is runnin’ around loose, back in our town.” As he spoke, the chief straightened away from the second downed man, whom Rachel now recognized as Marybeth Edwards’s older brother Carl.
    “Could you get off him, please?” Rachel said very quietly to Greg Skaggs, indicating Johnny. Clearly these men were prejudiced against him and would not have the slightest qualm about doing him an injury. She had believedin him all these years in the teeth of overwhelming public opinion, and she wasn’t going to abandon him now just because he was not the peach-fuzz-faced boy she had idiotically been expecting. “I hardly think any of us are in danger from him with so many armed policemen around. He doesn’t have a gun, does he?”
    “Far’s I can tell, he’s unarmed.” Kerry Yates, having just completed a quick frisking of the prisoner, spoke grudgingly to Chief Wheatley.
    “Get the hell off me, asshole!”
    “Shut your mouth, boy, or you’ll end up back in jail quicker than a sneeze,” Chief Wheatley said, his voice a low growl.
    “Fuck you.” Johnny’s reply made Rachel wince. Greg Skaggs rapped the black head with his pistol a little harder than was necessary for a mere warning. Kerry Yates yanked the arm he was holding a little higher and grinned. Johnny grunted with pain. Watching, Rachel saw red.
    “Let him up!” Rachel raised her voice, something she rarely did. Chief Wheatley looked at her, looked at his men, hesitated, then nodded.
    “Let him up,” he said. Then, to Johnny as he jerked his arm away from Kerry Yates’s