Read Over the Line for Free Online

in San Luis Obispo.
     
    Yeah, Janey coulda been a runaway. Coulda been a street whore like her bitch of a mother. But she was too good. Too sweet. Too smart. She'd gone to school. She'd worked summers bussing tables until she'd hitched a ride to one of them amusement parks and tried out for a singing job when she was sweet sixteen.
     
    That was where it all started for her. Singing her little heart out on a stage to entertain snot-nosed brats. One of those brats had been there with her granddaddy. Granddaddy the record producer.
     
    Yeah. One mighty smart record producer. Jack Swingle had seen talent. Real talent. And now Janey was a star.
     
    As big as they got.
     
    God, he'd missed her. He'd be seeing her again soon, though. Was in the process of clearing the way.
     
    Edwin imagined Janey riding him hard and finished himself off with a deep, guttural grunt.
     
    "I'm coming for you, honey," he whispered, then grinned at his little joke since, technically, he'd already come.
     
    Oh, he had so much more he wanted to give her. So much he wanted to say to her. So much he had to make up for.
     
    This time Janey would understand how he felt about her because this time he was going to make sure she knew what he was capable of doing for her.
     
    He picked up the phone. Made an important call.
     
     
    Same night,   U.S. Highway 45 truck stop,   Tupelo, Mississippi
     
    "Does it... bother you?"
     
    The voice on the other end of his cell phone was hushed, shaken, and, if Alex didn't miss his guess, something else.
     
    The slight tremor, the rise in pitch, told him there was also some vicarious excitement going on here. A thrill provoked by the kill. No doubt about it: He was dealing with a very sick fuck. But then, most of his clients were.
     
    He stood in the wide hallway on a cracked gray tile floor between the minimart and the men's John, glaring at a bank of banged-up metal lockers. "Last I knew, you weren't paying me to be bothered. You're paying me to do a job. It's done and I want the rest of my money."
     
    This was the first job Alex had ever done for this client. The cash was good. The method of payment wasn't. Half up-front, the balance after the completion of the job. But first, the client insisted on this little blow-by-blow account. Alex had to put up with these annoying questions as the scent of diesel, grease, grits, and smoke clung to his shirt like a cheap whore.
     
    "There has to have been a time... a time when it bothered you. Death ... it's so final. So ... irreversible. And yet..."
     
    An outside door opened, letting in a suffocating, muggy heat along with the cush and squeal of air brakes and the grind of shifting gears as an eighteen-wheeler pulled into the truck plaza.
     
    "And yet what?" Alex growled, way past impatient.
     
    "You really feel no guilt? No sense of wrong?"
     
    He grunted out a chuckle. "No pity for someone's dearly departed?"
     
    "There's no need to laugh. This is difficult enough."
     
    That did it. "Difficult for who? I was the one who had to wait. Sit in the dark and the rain in this mosquito-infested swamp town. I took the risk. I pulled the trigger."
     
    In this case the "trigger" hadn't been his Sig but a 1979 Pontiac. Had to be a '79 Pontiac Lemans. Green. His client had even told him where to find one. Like he said. A real sick fuck.
     
    No one would find the car now. He'd driven it off an embankment. The Lemans was lost somewhere outside of town, stuck at the bottom of the Tombigbee River, sunk hood deep in silt.
     
    Christ. Alex didn't know why he was wasting his time talking. He'd never have contact with this joker again. Yet. . . something about this particular client provoked a sort of morbid fascination. It took all kinds. But this was a first for Alex.
     
    Disgusted and feeling mean with it, he decided to employ the old axiom and give the client what they wanted. "You want to hear about the crunch of bones and spray of blood when she hit the windshield?"