Central Park Guillaume Musso (read along books .TXT) 📖

an umbrella and a windbreaker, a toothless old gas attendant ran up to them and leaned down to their window.

“My name’s Virgil. How can I help you folks?”

“Fill her up, please.”

“Sure. You should get that back window fixed too!”

“Can you give us a hand with it?” Gabriel said. “Maybe if you have a tarp or a piece of canvas?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Virgil promised. “In the meantime, why don’t you go inside and warm up?”

They got out of the car and ran to the shelter of the store’s awning. Rain streaming down their faces, they opened the door and found themselves in a large, noisy, lively room. The place was divided in two. On the right was a traditional general store with creaking wooden floorboards and old-fashioned shelves filled with jams, maple syrup, honey, snacks, candy bars, and so on. A small stand displayed homemade pies and brownies. On the other side was a long diner-style counter. A large woman stood behind it serving food and drinks.

It had a good-natured, family atmosphere, with customers at the counter digging into eggs with bacon, hash browns, or steaks, washed down with pints of home-brewed beer. There were rock-and-roll concert posters from the 1950s on the walls, and the diner seemed such an anachronism that Alice and Gabriel would hardly have been surprised to find out that Chuck Berry, Bill Haley, or Buddy Holly was playing there the next weekend.

Alice and Gabriel sat on two red leather stools at the back corner of the counter. That way, they were able to face each other.

“What can I get for you lovebirds?” the waitress asked, handing them two plastic-covered menus.

They weren’t especially hungry, but they realized they couldn’t sit there without ordering something.

While they made their choices, she filled two large glasses with water and pushed a metal napkin holder toward them. “Look at you, you’re soaked to the bone! You should dry yourselves off before you catch your death.”

They thanked her. Gabriel ordered a toasted BLT and Alice a clam chowder. While they waited for their food to arrive, they used the napkins to wipe the water from their faces and necks and to rub their hair dry.

“Enjoy!” the waitress said, bringing them a sandwich cut in triangles and chowder served in a hollowed-out loaf of bread.

On the bar in front of them, two glasses of whiskey appeared as if by magic in her large hands.

“On the house,” she said, “to warm you up. This is from ol’ Virgil’s personal supply.”

“Thank you so much!” Keyne said warmly, tasting a mouthful of rye. He bit into his sandwich and waited until the woman was out of earshot before looking at Alice.

“We’re about ten miles from the hospital, Schafer, so we should probably discuss our options now.”

She sipped her soup. “Go ahead.”

“I’m serious, Alice. I know how much pain Vaughn put you through, you and your family.”

“Kind of an understatement.”

“But let’s be clear about one thing: We’re not here to punish him. Understood? We go to the hospital, we arrest the guy, and we take him straight to Boston to interrogate him legally.”

Alice looked away. She too tasted the whiskey. It had notes of apricot, plum, and clove.

“Agreed?” Gabriel insisted.

“You take care of your responsibilities, I’ll take care of mine,” Alice replied.

Refusing to be deflected, Gabriel raised his voice. “All right, well, my first responsibility is to take that gun off you. Give it to me right now or you’re not leaving this bar.”

“Go screw yourself!”

“This isn’t negotiable, Alice.”

She hesitated, but then, realizing Gabriel was not going to compromise, she removed the Glock from its holster and handed it to him under the counter.

“Believe me, it’s better this way,” he said, sliding it into his belt.

With a shrug, she downed the rest of her whiskey. Just like every time she drank, she seemed to almost physically sense the alcohol flowing through her bloodstream. The first glass always gave her a rare sense of well-being, an adrenaline shot that sharpened her senses. The exhilarating impression of losing control just a little.

Her gaze flitted around the room from one person to another, one object to another, finally landing on Gabriel’s glass of whiskey. There, she stared in fascination at the variations of light floating on the surface of the liquid, the shifting gleams of gold, copper, bronze, and amber. The world was spinning around her. Right now, she felt the same sensation that had gripped her earlier in the car—the euphoric certainty that she was closer to the truth than ever before. The conviction that she was finally approaching the critical moment when she would be able to tear away the veil of ignorance.

Her gaze dissolved in the myriad colors of the whiskey. She felt paralyzed, incapable of tearing her eyes away from her partner’s glass. And then, suddenly, she got goose bumps on her arms and felt her throat tighten. And she realized that what she was staring at was not the glass of whiskey but the hand that encircled it—Gabriel’s hand. To be more precise, at his finger tapping nervously, rhythmically, on the side of the glass. She could see it with amazing clarity, as if she were looking through a magnifying glass. Gabriel’s hand—the curved fingers, the little wrinkles on his knuckles, the tiny cross-shaped scar on his right index finger. The type of injury you get in childhood by carelessly closing the sharpened blade of your first jackknife, the trace of which, left by the doctor’s stitches, will stay with you all your life.

Without warning, Virgil’s hairy face suddenly appeared between them at the corner of the bar.

“I fixed something up for your window, folks. You wanna come take a look and see if it’ll do?”

Gabriel stood up. “Stay here, where it’s warm,” he said to her. “I’ll come and get you when I know for sure we’re all set to go.”

Her cheeks burning, Alice watched Gabriel walk away. She could feel her heart savagely pounding in her chest, her whole being