Read So Cold the River (2010) for Free Online Page B

felt all day.
     Nothing of real notice, just a gentle, experimental puff, like the breeze wasn’t sure about it yet, but it was there all the
     same. She stood at the top of the steps and watched the bushes rustle and the leaves turn and flutter, saw that the wind was
     coming up out of the southwest now. Interesting. She hadn’t expected the shift today. The air was still hot, might’ve even
     pushed a few degrees past ninety by now, but she thought she could detect a chill to the wind, almost as if there was some
     cold trapped in it, surrounded by warmth but still there nevertheless.
    She’d go home and take a few readings, see what sense she could make of it. All she knew now was that there was something
     in the air. Something on the way.

6
    I T WAS A SIX-HOUR drive, the final third a hell of a lot more pleasant than the first two. Getting out of the city and into Indiana was a nightmare
     in itself, and then Eric was rewarded by only as bleak a drive as he could think of, Chicago to Indianapolis. South of Indy,
     though, things began to turn. The flatlands turned into hills, the endless fields filled with trees, the straight road began
     to curve. He stopped for lunch in Bloomington, left the highway and drove into town to see the campus, one he’d always heard
     was beautiful. It didn’t disappoint. He had a burger and a beer at a place called Nick’s, the beer something local, Upland
     Wheat. When in Rome, right? Turned out to be as good a warm-weather beer as he’d ever tasted, sort of thing made you want
     to stretch out in the sun and relax for a while. There was driving to be done, though, so he left it at just the one beer
     and got back into the Acura and pushed south.
    Past Bloomington to Bedford, and then the highway hookedand lost a lane in a town called Mitchell and began to dip and rise as it carved through the hills. Everything was green,
     lush, and alive, and now and then flatbed trucks loaded with fresh-quarried limestone lumbered by. There weren’t many houses
     along this stretch of the highway, but if Eric had had a dollar for every one with a basketball hoop outside, he’d have been
     a rich man by the time he hit Paoli.
    He knew from the map that Paoli meant he was close, and once he figured out what road to take away from the square—a mural
     covering the entire side of a building pointed the way to French Lick—he laid a little heavier on the gas, ready to have this
     drive done.
    A dull, constant headache that had lodged in the back of his skull somewhere north of Indianapolis, then faded while he had
     his beer, now returned with a little stronger pulse to it, one that made him wince every now and then as it hit a particularly
     inspired chord. He had Excedrin in the suitcase, would have to take some as soon as he got to the hotel. He’d hoped things
     might turn a little more exotic as he neared West Baden and French Lick, but there was just more farm country. He ran past
     one white rail fence that seemed to stretch for a mile—would hate to paint that thing—and not much else that was worth notice.
     Then a few buildings began to show themselves, and a sign told him he’d reached West Baden, and he thought,
You’ve got to be kidding me
.
    Because there was nothing here. A cluster of old buildings and a barbecue stand, and that was it. Then he felt his eyes drawn
     away from the road, up the hill to the right, and he let off the gas and felt his breath catch in his chest as the speed fell
     off.
    There was the hotel. And Alyssa Bradford had used the correct word in describing it, because only one word came close—
surreal
. The place was that, and then some. Pale yellowtowers flanked a mammoth crimson dome, and the rest of the structure fell away beneath, hundreds of windows visible in the
     stone. It looked more like a castle than a hotel, something that belonged in Europe, not on this stretch of farmland.
    A horn blew behind him, and Eric realized he’d coasted almost to