PROLOGUE
PROLOGUE
Gareth Ogden stood on the wide beach looking out over the Gulf of Mexico. The tide was out and the Gulf was calm—the water flat and the waves low. He saw a few seagulls silhouetted against the darkening sky and heard their tired cries over the sound of the waves.
He took a puff of his cigarette and thought with a bitter smile …
The gulls sound like they hate this weather too.
He wasn’t sure why he’d even bothered to walk down here from his house. He used to enjoy the sounds and smells of the beach in the evening. Maybe it was just his age, but he found it hard to enjoy much of anything in this muggy heat. Summers were getting hotter than they ever used to. Even after dusk like this, the breeze off the water offered no relieving coolness, and the humidity was suffocating.
He finished his cigarette and ground it into the sand with his foot. Then he turned away from the water to walk back across the waterfront drive toward his house, a weather-beaten structure that looked out over the old road and the desolate beach.
As he trudged across the stretch of sand, Gareth thought of all the repairs he’d had to do on the house after the last hurricane, just a few years back. He’d had to rebuild the big front porch and stairs, and replace a lot of siding and roof shingles, but he’d been lucky that there was no serious structural damage. Amos Crites, who owned the houses on either side of Gareth’s, had been faced with almost complete rebuilding.
That goddamn storm, he thought, swatting at a mosquito.
Property values had plummeted since then. He wished he could sell the house and get the hell out of Rushville, but nobody would pay enough for it.
Gareth had lived in this town all his life, and he sure didn’t feel like it had done him any favors. As far as he was concerned, Rushville had been going downhill for a long time—at least ever since the interstate had passed it by. He could remember how it had been a thriving little summer tourist town before then, but those days were long gone.
Gareth made his way through an opening in the slatted wooden sand fencing and walked onto the beachfront road. As he felt the soles of his shoes absorb heat from the pavement, he looked up at his house. Its first-floor windows were lit up and friendly …
Almost like somebody lives there.
Although “living” hardly seemed the word for Gareth’s own lonely existence. And thoughts of happier days—when his wife, Kay, was still alive and they were raising their daughter, Cathy—only made him feel more depressed.
As he walked along the sidewalk leading up to his house, Gareth glimpsed something through the screen door—a shadow moving around inside.
Who might that be? he wondered.
He wasn’t surprised that some visitor had let himself in. The front door was standing wide open and the screen door was unlatched. Gareth’s friends were pretty much free to come and go as they liked.
“It’s a free country,” he liked to tell them. “Or so goes the rumor.”
As he climbed the long crooked stairs up to his porch, Gareth figured the visitor might be Amos Crites. Maybe Amos had come over from where he lived on the other side of town to check out his properties along the beach. Gareth knew that nobody had rented either house for August, a notoriously hot and sticky month around here.
Yeah, I’ll bet that’s who it is, Gareth thought as he crossed the porch.
Amos often stopped by like that to b***h and moan about things in general, and Gareth was glad to chime in with grumbling of his own. He supposed maybe he and Amos were a bad influence on each other that way …
But hey, what are friends for?
Gareth stood outside the doorway, shaking some sand off his sandals.
“Hey, Amos,” he called out. “Grab yourself a beer from the fridge.”
He expected Amos to call back …
“Already got it.”
But no reply came. Gareth guessed that maybe Amos was back in the kitchen, just now getting a beer. Or maybe he was just crankier than usual. That was fine with Gareth …
Misery loves company, as they say.
Gareth opened the screen door and walked inside.
“Hey, Amos, what’s up?” he called out.
A flash of movement caught his peripheral vision. He turned and glimpsed a shadowy form silhouetted against the living room lamp.
Whoever it was rushed at Gareth too fast for him to ask any questions.
The figure raised an arm, and Gareth glimpsed a flash of steel. Something unspeakably hard crashed against his forehead, and then an explosion burst through his brain like shattering glass.
Then there was nothing.
