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The Night Awakens: A Mystery Writers of America Anthology - Softcover

Clark, Mary Higgins

 
9780671519186: The Night Awakens: A Mystery Writers of America Anthology
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0671519182 ISBN 13: 9780671519186
Verlag: Pocket Books, 2000

Inhaltsangabe

The crowned Queen of Suspense, #1 New York Times bestselling author Mary Higgins Clark invites a star-studded cast of authors to share original stories of men and women joined in love...and driven to murder.

Sarah Shankman puts a chilling new spin on payback in "All You Need Is Love." In "Widower's Walk," Joseph Hansen slaps a rancher with a cold wake-up call out on the trail. Loren D. Estleman cuts a honeymoon short when a bride learns she's married to the mob in "Something Borrowed, Something Black." Brendan DuBois drives a brother to the road to revenge in his story, "Sibling Rivalry." In Sally Gunning's "The Perils of Pond Scum," jealousy leads to a murderous extreme. In "Afraid of the Dark," Nancy Pickard exposes the truth behind the headlines as a young love leads to old-fashioned homicide. A panoply of other renowned writers spellbind us with the seductive charms of love, lust, and other lethal attractions.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

The #1 New York Times bestselling author Mary Higgins Clark wrote over forty suspense novels, four collections of short stories, a his­torical novel, a memoir, and two children’s books. With bestselling author Alafair Burke she wrote the Under Suspicion series including The Cinderella Murder, All Dressed in White, The Sleeping Beauty Killer, Every Breath You Take, You Don’t Own Me, and Piece of My Heart. With her daughter Carol Higgins Clark, she coauthored five suspense novels. More than one hundred million copies of her books are in print in the United States alone. Her books are international bestsellers.

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The Perils of Pond Scum

Two minutes after it happened, I wasn't sure it had. I could see the glass on the door from the broken picture, I could feel the throb in the back of my head where it had snapped into the wall, but I could also see and feel Jeffrey, his face contorted with shock, his hand trembling as it touched my face.

"My God, Hannah, look at us. Do you see what you've done? Is this how you want it?"

I pushed his hand away, trying to focus. What had I done? I had walked into the dark apartment. My apartment. Jeffrey's voice had come at me. Where have you been? I'd reached for the light, but something had kept me from it. Hands. Strong. Angry. Had they grabbed me? Thrown me? I'd crashed backward into the wall. I knew that much. I'd crashed into the wall, and the light had come on, and there was Jeffrey.

Jeffrey. In my apartment. A week after I'd told him I needed some time alone.

"Forgive me," said Jeffrey now. I could see the rise and fall of his chest under the shirt as he struggled to calm himself. "I frightened you, didn't I? I wanted to talk. I let myself in. But you upset me, Hannah. I had no intention of -- " He broke off and dashed a hand across his face. "Are you all right?"

I felt my head and winced.

"You're not. Here. Sit down." He led me to the couch and sat beside me.
Skillful, gentle fingers probed my scalp. That was one of the first things I'd
loved about Jeffrey. First the wide, easy smile, but second had been those competent, reassuring hands.

No, it couldn't have been his hands.

Jeffrey stopped probing and smoothed back my hair. "Not even a goose egg. But you see what can happen. I'm sorry I barged in and frightened you. This isn't me tonight. But this isn't you, either. This isn't like you, sneaking around."

"I wasn't sneaking around. I went with Ellen and Paul to -- "

"You can leave Ellen out of it, Hannah. We know Ellen wasn't there, don't we? It was you and Paul. But Ellen's part of the problem, too, isn't she? Your sister doesn't like us spending all our time together, does she? I don't know why you listen to her. That's where the problem lies. You don't need time alone. We need time alone. Just the two of us, without all this
interference. I know what we'll do, we'll go the cabin."

"Jeffrey -- "

"Hush." Jeffrey leaned back, bringing me with him until my cheek rested on the hard plane of his chest.

"You know I'm right, Hannah. You don't solve problems by hiding from them. We'll get out of the city, go to the cabin for the long weekend on Saturday. We'll be alone. We'll talk. We'll sort this out." While he talked, his hands, those hands, stroked my hair, my neck, my face.

I knew I should move, get up, ask him to leave. Why did it suddenly seem so hard, so pointless, so...so silly? And what if Jeffrey was right? Maybe if we were alone, if there was no third party to make him angry, if I didn't make him angry...And what had he done, after all? He'd gotten jealous. It was flattering, really.

Jeffrey's hands gripped my shoulders and eased me sideways. "Look, you're right. You need time of your own. I can see that. I'll go now. I'll pick you up
Saturday."

When he picked me up on Saturday, and I saw the fresh haircut, the face shaved to the bone, the jacket I particularly loved that made him look so broad in the
back, I thought of Harry's. That's where we'd met, Harry's Tap. Jeffrey had worn that jacket at Harry's. Everything had been fresh and new at Harry's. Jeffrey had met me, wanted me, wooed me.

"We're getting a good early start," said Jeffrey now. He smiled at me from the driver's seat, that smile I'd first met at Harry's. "Or should I say a good fresh start?"

A fresh start. To go back to the way it was at Harry's. Suddenly, the weekend ahead of me glimmered brightly.

My daydreams dissolved as Jeffrey started talking, filling me in on the history of the cabin. It belonged to Jeffrey's father, divvied his way in a nasty divorce settlement. It was a treasure beyond compare, said Jeffery, sitting virtually alone in the middle of two thousand acres of conservation land. Most of the year, it sat there empty, waiting for Jeffrey's father to remember he owned it and blow down the expressway for a getaway summer weekend with most of the people you'd expect him to want to get away from. He brought business associates, politicians, friends, acquaintances, anyone he could find, said Jeffrey.

Except Jeffrey.

But Jeffrey didn't seem to resent this parental neglect as much as I thought he might. He talked calmly of arranging with his father, once he came of age, for his own time at the cabin. July and August were his father's. The off-season months were Jeffrey's own. Usually, because of the risk of frost, Jeffery
drained the pipes and closed up the cabin the last weekend in September. It was only the unseasonably warm October, a true Indian summer, that had prompted the late visit this year.

At first, as Jeffrey talked about the cabin, I listened attentively -- how there were plenty of deer, fox, trout. How there were no phones, electricity, neighbors. But as the sun beat through the windshield and the tires hummed over the highway and Jeffrey's voice rose and fell, I began to feel drowsy. I closed my eyes.

I woke when we hit the first rut in the dirt road.

"You just missed Fairnham," said Jeffrey.

"Fairnham?"

"Our last sight of civilization. If you could call it that. A post office, a laundromat, and a town hall."

I looked around. On either side of me was nothing but wilderness -- deep, black, wild. Huge pines blocked the light from overhead, and thick seedlings
and bull briars and dead stumps obliterated the ground.

We rattled in and out of the ruts for what seemed like another ten miles, until Jeffrey suddenly yanked the wheel hard right and we plunged into the trees.

I gasped.

Jeffrey laughed. "Almost there now."

When I'd collected myself, I could see that we weren't forging a new trail through virgin forest, as I'd first supposed, but were actually following a faint track through the pine needles and dead leaves. It seemed to go on forever, the forest crowding closer and closer on each side, until finally, just when I was sure if I didn't see sky or light or air I would suffocate,
I saw the glimmer of the water through the trees.

The car rolled to a stop fifty feet on.

"Like it?" asked Jeffrey.

I didn't answer right away. I wasn't sure. If I looked straight ahead, the gloom of the woods seemed to have disappeared as if someone had waved a magic
wand, and the sun stretched a welcome pool of light across the surface of the pond. A narrow dock of rough planking bridged the gap between sun and cabin, but when I turned to look at the cabin itself, I saw that neither sun nor water had penetrated that far. The cabin was nestled in shade so dark it seemed like night, and the deeply stained clapboards of the porch wrapped what I could see of the doors and windows in even blacker shadows. I felt Jeffrey's eyes swivel in my direction.

"Well, Hannah?"

"I...yes. It's...the pond...it's beautiful."

He grinned. "Wait till you see the inside." He pulled me after him up three stone steps to the cabin. When I stepped onto the porch, the floor gave slightly under me. Jeffery pulled a rusty key from his jacket pocket, scraped it into the lock, and the door opened with a moan. He stood back, and I stepped inside.

It smelled of must. A pale green light oozed through a crack in the shutters and wobbled across the floor, illuminating what the previous tenants had left us chewed mattress batting, empty seed casings, mice droppings. My eyes traveled to the farther wall.

A pair of beady black eyes stared...

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Verlag
Pocket Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2000
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0671519182
ISBN 13 
9780671519186
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
320
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