Read Velvet Rain - A Dark Thriller for Free Online

around. Not mine.”
    Mary shrugged, embarrassed. “Grad present. My Dad. He’s a bit of a jerk sometimes, but he loves his little girl. You got a name, stranger?”
    “Brent.”
    “Just—turn that down, Kenny! Jeepers creepers.”
    The driver turned it down a little.
    “Just Brent?”
    “Brent Thompson.”
    “Well, Brent Thompson, what’s in Wisconsin?”
    “Relatives. Haven’t been there in ten years.”
    “Whereabouts? I’m from Appleton.” It was the driver.
    “Milton.” Maybe there wasn’t a Milton, Wisconsin, but Kain had said it as if it had always been there.
    “Never heard of it,” Kenny said. “Sounds like an armpit. Like Bloomfield.” He high-fived his buddy.
    “No looking back,” Mary added, struggling to keep her voice high enough. “This ride’s a one-way.”
    Kenny the driver cranked the volume, and the three of them chorused to “Jailhouse Rock.” The air teased with new rose, the wind kissing like the first time. The highway flowed as an uncharted river through the endless prairie, and Kain slipped back, let the music take him away. He listened as they sang; they were pretty good, all in all. They were innocent explorers, like Lewis and Clark, searching for something but not knowing what. He envied them; longed for their time. He hadn’t planned on lying to them, but he had this sense—it was strong—that he might soon be putting down roots close to here, for a time anyway, and that it was better they didn’t know. They had jobs and adventure in Des Moines, after all, a whole life to get into trouble. They didn’t need Brent Thompson or Kain Richards or whoever the hell he was this week, bringing it to them.
    ~
    He avoided Des Moines. Too many faces. He hitched a ride to Stuart and spent two days shootin’ stick, but the fun—if you called penny-a-game eight-ball against a group of teetotaling geezers that hung out at a place called Larry’s fun —pretty much ended there. A sobering fact of Iowa life was that you couldn’t get as much as a whiff of a Schlitz pull-tab—legally, that was—in a tavern in ’62; that particular treat was still a good year or so away for Iowans, or never, if you listened to the prohibitionists. As it was, he hooked up with a big rig hauling four-legged steaks, the driver dropping him off just south of Early, the beefheads heading east to meet the ax in Waterloo.
    An hour later, he was crossing the Little Sioux River with John Wayne.
    ~
    He was a kid out of Winterset, Iowa—no lie—twentyish, chubby, thin spectacles, a sunburnt arm resting on the door, hand tapping to the radio, the other clasped loosely on the wheel of a beige 1953 Chevrolet Handyman station wagon. His parents really had named him after the Duke, but the resemblance ended with the name. He looked about as close to the actor from Winterset as the drifter did.
    The kid was going all the way to Canton to visit “Relations,” but that was in South Dakota. Kain wasn’t sure he wanted to leave the Hawkeye State, at least not yet. Some said the prairies were dull and uninspiring, but he found the rolling hills and wide-open spaces liberating. Good for the soul.
    He liked the kid straight off. He seemed bright, a definite candidate for the Sense. But you couldn’t always tell, and unless the cat was out of the bag, you could never be sure. Most people didn’t have it, of course, most people were Stiffs, and that was a good thing. Still, he felt a slight burn of that infuriating static, suddenly. Rising and cresting like waves.
    He kept the talk light, as always. “Ever see The Searchers? ”
    “You kiddin’? Only a zillion times! Best Western ever made, if you ask me.”
    The kid was probably right there. “So you don’t mind the name.”
    “Heck no.” His face contorted a bit, his lips forming a small crooked grin. “People never forget the Little Duke, mister.” He said it in that same dynamic voice of his famous namesake, a pretty good imitation, not bad at all.