Let Me In by Adam Nicholls (best romantic novels in english txt) 📖

Everything in his body told him to turn back now, but Morgan knew better. It’d been decades since he’d believed in ghosts or monsters, and he knew it was his inner child talking to him. He dismissed it for now, following the light produced by his cell phone, peering into the holes of the smashed windows. He directed the light into the rooms, but there was nothing there besides wall graffiti and old fast food wrappers. Morgan wanted to head inside and investigate, but something told him there was nothing to find. The police had probably inspected it thoroughly anyway.

Moving on, Morgan stepped away from the building and headed toward the boat slip. The breeze returned to him here, the assault of icy midnight wind tearing at his coat. He shivered, pulling it taut at the collar with one hand, while the hand holding the cell phone suffered the pain of a thousand cold spikes pricking his bare skin. He did his best to ignore it, simply following the most lit path to where the car had been dragged from the river only days ago. It felt surreal standing in the exact spot where his cousin had been found dead. Life was fragile, and he often forgot that. Hopefully this would be a lesson for him.

Focusing on the part of him that’d told him to be here, Morgan walked to the end of the slip and gazed out toward the water. There was nothing but faraway lights and the sparkle of them bouncing across the water. He shook in the cold breeze and turned toward the slope, lighting up the dark tracks where the car had been recovered. While his breath drew short, he followed them back until he was on level ground. What exactly had happened here? What had pushed somebody into hurting Dusty in such a cruel, vindictive way?

He intended to find out.

At the far back of the boatyard, past where the tracks ended, Morgan shined the light on the ground and continued his hike back to the car. On the far rim of the yard, buried between two patches of overgrown weeds that’d probably been healthy grass long ago, two deep grooves in the dirt formed a familiar pattern. Morgan froze before crouching low to investigate. Something was off about this picture, and the truth behind it felt only an inch too far away for him to grasp. Regardless, he activated the camera on his phone and snapped away at the grooves from multiple angles.

It wasn’t until he took the fourth picture that he realized.

These were tire tracks.

He was sure of it now, kicking away the weed patches and following them back to the exit of the yard. It wasn’t much of a discovery—it was probably nothing at all—but Morgan kept snapping photos until the tracks ended. When he was done, he returned to his car and sent the pictures to Gary’s phone.

In the warm, comfortable silence of his car, he reached for his coffee, which had turned cold long ago. Each sip disgusted him more and more, but God knew he needed the caffeine, and he wasn’t above drinking it cold. Still, he cradled it in his hands as if it would warm him, staring into the dark abyss of the windshield.

Until his phone lit up.

Fatigue picked at his brain while he reached for the phone in its dashboard cradle. He swiped with his cold-numbed thumb, the caffeine working together with the name on the screen to quicken the beat of his heart.

It was a text message from Gary, and it was good news: