Read Well Fed - 05 for Free Online

no gimp would be able to creep up on him, not with the dry brush carpeting the ground.
    And he hoped to Christ the rats weren’t around.
    A drink. Just one to steady his nerves, to take the edge off. S’all he needed—quick and nasty—but the evil part of him, the part that swore he wasn’t an alcoholic, murmured sweetly that it didn’t have to be just one. Seriously. What better way to face the day than by kicking back and tying one on? Or in this case, loading several in .
    He pulled on his nose, erasing an itch, and backed away from the open pit, just in case the bones did something entirely freaky. If they did, Gus would simply bolt for the SUV and damn Talbert and his boys. Couldn’t find ’em, Adam. Sorry, Maggie. Matter of fact, that story rang temptingly clear in Gus’s head, but he shook his head in slow acceptance of his purpose.
    He’d go a little farther.
    See the mystery mansion that had tempted Talbert out there.
    Find out what happened to that alpha-male shit stain and his butternut bum buddies and return with a full report.
    Gus returned to the SUV and started it up. He stared at the edges of the paved road, his peripheral vision seeing the grins of skeletal faces. Sweat covered his face in a sheen that had nothing to do with heat. His fingers tapped on the curve of the steering wheel before he gripped the leather. Fear. Dread. The old, unwanted friends sat astride his shoulders like chortling goblins realizing all his defenses had been lowered and just amazed to have such persuasive seats. Even better… they smelled doubt as ripe as putrefying compost.
    The road took him down a long spidery tunnel, wondrous in any season, with yellow and orange leaves piled up in stiff drifts. He drove along this late-autumn pipeline, the road straightening out like a neck struggling to swallow a bone…
    Until it finally opened in eye-popping wonder.

4
    Gus knew, from his days as a house painter, that the older houses often presented the most work. They weren’t armored against age and the elements like the newer models with their candy-shell vinyl siding. Gables, high-peaked fasciae, and wide soffits could make a housepainter’s job tricky at times, and without the safety of a scaffold, the gymnastics performed at the end of a forty-foot ladder to reach those last bare spots rivaled circus acts.
    The house before Gus filled the width of the windshield and would’ve taken him and a professional crew months to prep and paint.
    Mansion .
    Gus tried the word and marveled at the reality. He eased to a stop, brain frozen by the palatial magnificence of Mortimer’s superstructure. Overall, the house was white, with a marked Swiss influence of bare wooden beams and brackets lining and crisscrossing the upper levels. The first level appeared coated in a siding of stone while looming balconies dotted a third level plastered in unblemished weatherboarding. The home looked to be three stories tall at a glance, but rising above the center of the home were a fourth and fifth level, marked by a gigantic dome perched on top. Spider legs of black girders creased the structure’s creamy surface. At a guess, Gus figured the whole construction was easily fifty thousand square feet of living space, perhaps even upward of seventy, all under multiple roofs with eaves wide enough to dance on. Gables, intricate carvings, and moldings of dragons and chimera perched almost everywhere—with one serpentine beast fashioned out of copper and drawing attention to a tall chimney—amazed Gus with their size and the sheer creativity necessary to conceive such a design.
    Mortimer had to have been a billionaire. This “house” rivaled the size of a shopping mall and would eat up millions in yearly upkeep. Black paneling on sections of the roof glared flatly at him, and he recognized solar paneling but doubted even those few installations could keep up with the power demand. He’d be surprised if the damned monster didn’t have elevators