Zero Island (Blessid Trauma Crime Scene Cleaners Book 2) Chris Bauer (free reads TXT) 📖

his alias, another in a succession of many, all of them chewed up and spit out over the years like sticks of chewing gum. “With a beast of an engine. Four hundred nine cubic inches. My indulgent daddy bought it for me before I was old enough to drive. Garaged ever since.”

He’d heard about her attachment to her beloved car many times. Today he’d been invited to drive it. First time ever. He’d queued up a few other firsts in his mind for the day as well.

Randall, age forty-five, was often mistaken for sixty, older if necessary, all except for his sex drive. Mark Twain/Santa Claus handsome. Premature white hair and a gray-white beard contributed to his image. He wasn’t complaining; the coloring came in handy. He could go full senior in seconds. For Randall, life was good, excluding one part of it: he was dying.

He’d felt crappy. Tired, out of breath, and with a persistent cough. A clinic diagnosed his anemia first, then they handed him his death sentence: Stage 2 pancreatic cancer, at the moment still localized. Without aggressive, cutting-edge procedures, it would progress. Procedures he couldn’t afford, at least not as a free man. Procedures he might expect to get in prison, considering this was where he would probably end up. Guinea pig medicine or the death penalty: one way or another, prison would cure him.

As a boarder in Loretta’s suburban Allentown rancher, one year now, he’d never been invited to drive her precious car. It took two months of chatting her up before he could ferret his way into her personal space, first as a bingo player, then as a bridge partner. A month more to gain her trust in minor matters like cashing her small third-party checks to use for their shared house groceries and her prescription co-pays. Another month of weekly late afternoon and evening trips with her to the Sands Casino Resort in Bethlehem, where he’d bankrolled her almost as often as she’d bankrolled him. He’d also gained the trust of her senior women friends, banging two of the friskier ones when the opportunities presented themselves. And the last two months he’d spent stealing Loretta’s identity. Last week, he drained her bank accounts. Then he got the cancer diagnosis.

He had most of her savings now. Added to this was this little matter of a new charge for attempted rape of a minor, the trial scheduled to start tomorrow. His grandfatherly demeanor and appearance convinced Loretta he couldn’t possibly be guilty of the accusation. The time was right for splitsville, but not without leaving a significant impression here like everywhere else he’d lived, because this was what he did.

One thing Randall hadn’t counted on: the despair that came with the diagnosis, and his pressing need to find one of his women, sixteen years absent, and the child she was pregnant with when she left. Regina, an exotic dancer, barely legal. Small-town girl from a burg outside of Scranton. He’d convinced himself there would always be time to find her—them. His long game: settle somewhere in the middle of nowhere, forget about his past life, then track her down and bring her and her kid—his kid—back with him. However difficult this might prove to be, connecting with her amicably would be almost impossible, considering someone shot him in the face and left him for dead when that someone spirited her away. She wouldn’t want to be found, at least not by him.

He would arrive in Rancor, near Scranton, by nightfall today, and start his search. His interest in her personally bordered on zero. His interest in her child was now his reason for living.

Loretta beamed in the seat next to him, feeling giddy from Pink Squirrels and the adrenaline high that twelve hundred dollars in casino winnings had given her. He’d talked her into letting him drive her car for the short leg home.

“I’m glad you like it, Stephen. Driven only by, yes, this little old lady, to the grocery store on Fridays and to church on Sundays.” A vivid yellow headscarf, some Marilyn Monroe sunglasses, and the massage and facial she’d made him wait for had telegraphed her mood. “Except today, I’m not feeling very old.”

With the Chevy’s top down, the wind in her newly rinsed blonde hair, and an attentive man at her side, she for sure felt like a million bucks and decades younger, the day ahead full of possibilities.

“And right now,” she said, her drunk smile greeting Randall’s glances, “I’m not feeling all that ladylike. And I was never little in two places that count, as I know you’ve noticed.”

Her warm eyes looked at him expectantly. She moved closer to him in the seat, dragged a pudgy, red-manicured finger sensually up and down his forearm. Her hand went to his lap, creating a stirring in his pants.

He willed his arousal to cease. This would happen on his terms, and his terms only.

Home at her place in fifteen minutes, he reminded her. “It’ll be worth the wait,” he said.

In her bedroom, he delighted her by the largesse of his package in both length and girth, but her delight wasn’t how he intended their intimacy to end. Their second time would all be about him. She screamed in panic as he choked her with his belt. He punched her unconscious after he climaxed. Randall dragged Loretta to her garage, secured her wrists and ankles together with plastic cable ties, then duct-taped her mouth. He lifted and dropped her into the Chevy’s trunk, banged her up a little on the way in, slammed the trunk lid shut. If she were found dead, her body left in her house, he’d be the prime suspect. With the both of them missing, the wheels of justice would take longer to turn. Now he went about gathering up his packed clothes and garment bag and arranged them in the back seat of the Chevy, all of this premeditated. In his pocket was a prepaid cell phone