For Rye Gavin Gardiner (best book club books for discussion TXT) 📖

company like Mr Rye’s has so many regulations to follow. No, I’ve been told all procedures were adhered to and the stock was secured to a high degree inside that truck.’

‘Then…how?’

Hector reached into his jacket and pulled out what looked like a meteor fragment, charred black and melted in on itself. Hanging from its base was a severed red wire.

She looked blankly at Hector.

‘It’s the receiving end of a detonator, Miss Wakefield.’

‘How long does it take to get an old man his pills?’ Thomas demanded. She hurried through and held the glass of water to her father’s lips as he struggled the Dexlatine down his tight airway, all the while tapping and scraping that finger at manic, irregular intervals on the arm of the chair.

It was late. Hector had left shortly after returning the charred detonator component to his pocket. She hadn’t known what to say. Did someone want Quentin dead? Maybe they’d hit the wrong truck. Did Quentin want someone dead, or was this a publicity stunt taken too far? Maybe someone had it in for Rye Productions. Maybe the town had it in for Rye Productions. Could these honest townsfolk really have that kind of terrorism in them? They sure as hell didn’t want him around, but they didn’t seem capable of blowing a truck sky-high. Regardless, Hector’s efforts all came back to the identification of Sylvia Wakefield’s killer. He’d even taken early retirement in the pursuit of his cause. Despite the abandoning of his badge, Hector O’Connell was, in Renata’s eyes, as much a detective as he’d ever been in their short time together, and she’d let him know:

‘Goodnight, Detective,’ she’d said before closing the front door. His smile warmed her.

The night was dark, and it was getting darker – just like her future. What savings she had left wouldn’t last forever, and it was only a matter of time before the debt collection vultures caught wind of her absconding to Millbury Peak. It was a persistent myth that your work on the shelves of bookstores meant boundless riches, particularly when these bookstores were mostly, in fact, train station and airport newsagents. The Quentin C. Rye display had happened to share the same roof as her skinny paperbacks, but that was all they shared. No, her remaining funds wouldn’t last long. More imperatively, she worried that her will to serve under the tyrant that was her father might expire even sooner. Her terror of Thomas Wakefield had never dissipated in all these years, but she was now equally terrified of abandoning him. He was a monster, a dying monster, but he was also her father. She frowned at the tedium of it, the cliché. Unconditional love: you didn’t get a say in it. Biological and unstoppable, there was a circuit in her mind programming her to save this wretched creature from dying alone. Her mother, she’d had the strength to stay all those years – probably solely for Renata – and so she would find the strength too.

Had it not been for that damned promise, the rope may well have had its way by now.

It waited patiently on her person wherever she went, a curled up serpent in her satchel offering solace; another promise, this one to herself. Once she’d arranged a babysitter for her dear old dad she could find a beam strong enough to snap her neck, nice and clean. The key to this sweet finality lay with her infernal brother, Noah. And all the while a cloak of craziness lay over Millbury Peak. A detonator?

The evening smiled on Thomas Wakefield, granting him a nap in the festering armchair even without the administration of his medication. Regardless, Renata still gave him his dose when he awoke. She wasn’t taking any chances. The Dexlatine wrapped its invisible arms around Thomas’s restless nervous system, tightening its grip on his trembling muscles.

He was calm. It was time.

‘Father,’ she began, chewing her lip, ‘I know you don’t want to discuss it, but I need to know how to get in touch with Noah. It’s been great spending time with you—’ she cleared her throat, choking on the lie ‘—but I have responsibilities, things I need to do.’

Snap, she thought. Nice and clean.

‘He’s not coming back,’ Thomas said. ‘If he was, he’d have been at his mother’s funeral. He’s gone.’ A bony, liver-spotted hand, apparently still outside the influence of the medication, shot out and grabbed Renata’s wrist. He pulled her in.

‘Father,’ she gasped, ‘you’re hurting me.’

His blank eyes ceased their idle rolling and locked onto her. ‘You,’ he breathed. She stared. He wrenched her closer. ‘It should have been you.’

Pain flashed in her brain. She shook it off and yanked her arm, Thomas’s quivering grip slipping down her wrist. His unseeing glare burrowed into her eyes.

He smiled.

‘You and I, we’re the same, girl. The curse that’s ravaged me is coming for you, for your mind. I feel it in your flesh.’

‘Father, I—’

The breath fell from her as he jerked her closer still, their faces now inches apart. Her eyes flicked to her mother’s orange fabric scissors on the couch.

‘My child, this family is forsaken. The flames finally came for your mother, and death is stripping the life from me…’ His leathery smile widened. ‘…as it will strip the life from you.’

He nodded at the monstrosity above the fireplace.

‘A flood is due, girl. Our Lord has a wave reserved for the Wakefields.’ His empty eyes bloated. ‘It’s coming, child. The flood is coming. But for now He shall settle for the souls of our blasphemous clan. We have brought this upon ourselves. This family, cowardly and sinful, has authored its own demise.’

A tear crawled from his eye.

‘But my beloved Noah,’ he continued fanatically, his trembling hand still locked around her wrist, ‘that wave was not meant for him. It was he who was