Dusk Corners (A Logan and Scarlett Thriller Book 1) Read online

  Dusk Corners

  A Logan and Scarlett Thriller

  Dan Padavona

  Contents

  Get a FREE Book!

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Get a FREE Book!

  Support Indie Authors

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Get a FREE Book!

  I’m a pretty nice guy once you look past the grisly images in my head. Most of all, I love connecting with awesome readers like you.

  Join my VIP Reader Group and get a FREE serial killer thriller for your Kindle.

  Get My Free Book

  www.danpadavona.com/thriller-readers-vip-group/

  1

  Sheila lowered the window in Brady’s Ford Focus, because she’d rather listen to the wind than risk another argument. He eased the Focus around something dead in the middle of the desolate Texas road and swung the car out of the oncoming lane. Not that he needed to hurry. There wasn’t another car in sight for as far as Sheila could see.

  They were traveling from Denver to Roswell after stopping in Lubbock, where Brady had wanted to visit a football teammate from high school. These days, the friend played linebacker at Texas Tech. The problem was, the kid banged up his leg during practice and was at the hospital when Brady drove into town. Since the failed get-together, Brady had been sullen, and Sheila wondered if he even cared that she accompanied him. After Lubbock, they planned to stay at a Hampton Inn in Roswell and attend a music festival outside the city. Like everything touristy in Roswell, the festival employed an alien theme, with the stage shaped into a humongous, crashed spaceship.

  Ten miles south of Lubbock, Brady dodged a May hailstorm and exited the highway. According to the map, this new road, Highway 6, would take them to the New Mexico border. Now Sheila wondered. The map claimed a town called Joliet existed a few miles ahead, but there was no town, only pancake-flat clay and meadow, and the occasional pumpjack, slamming the earth in search of oil. No farmers riding tractors, no travelers to prove humanity existed southwest of Lubbock. Only the occasional festering roadkill suggested vehicles, probably eighteen-wheelers, motored down Highway 6. Now that Sheila thought about it, she hadn’t noticed a road sign since they passed through a sleepy town called Dusk Corners twenty miles back.

  “Where are we?”

  “West Texas,” he said, peering at her as though she were a simpleton. Though Brady hadn’t played football since high school, he still possessed an athletic physique—mountainous shoulders, rock-hard biceps, tree trunks for legs. “This road leads to New Mexico. Better than dodging semis on the interstate, don’t you agree?”

  “Are you sure this is the highway? Where’s Joliet? Where are the highway markers?”

  “Sheila, we’ve been on the same road since we passed through that ghost town. Duskville?”

  “Dusk Corners.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Are you sure six didn’t branch off? Remember the fork in the road after Dusk Corners? I’m just saying, maybe we should stop and ask for directions.”

  He ground his teeth and stared through the windshield. “The sun is dead ahead. That means we’re traveling west. And what’s west of Texas? New Mexico. Unless all those U.S. maps I memorized back in grade school were fabrications, we’ll drive straight into New Mexico, even if we’re blindfolded. Check your phone if you’re so worried.”

  Little good that would do. Sheila hadn’t noticed a single bar on her phone since Lubbock faded from the mirror.

  “Let me concentrate on the road. You’re making me nervous.” He flipped on the stereo and boomed a heavy metal song that gave her a headache. “And close your window. It’s a hundred degrees outside. All you’re doing is letting the bugs in.”

  As if to emphasize Brady’s point, some furry, winged insect the size of a golf ball slammed against the hood and splattered guts across the windshield. A trickle of cleaning solution spit across the glass as Brady ran the wipers. She’d warned him to check the fluids. He never listened. Brady only cared about getting from point A to point B in the quickest time possible.

  Sheila raised the window, then twisted the volume knob and lowered the music to humane levels. He glared ice picks into her. If Brady reached for the knob and cranked the music again, she’d give him a piece of her mind.

  Closing the window and turning the music down trapped her in quietude with Brady, and neither seemed in the mood for talking. Her stomach flip-flopped, and she touched her belly. This was the third time this week her stomach had soured. It seemed especially bad in the morning. She stamped down the voice in her head, reminding her she hadn’t gotten her period. Which wasn’t unusual. Sometimes it arrived a week late. But she’d slept with Brady several times over the last month, and though he’d used protection, she accepted birth control wasn’t foolproof.

  The stomach upset was nothing to worry over. Indigestion or a spring flu going around. Sheila and Brady attended a college party Friday night, and there had been a boy handing out drinks and displaying cold symptoms.

  She watched Brady from the corner of her eye. His hands formed a death grip on the steering wheel. She was being too hard on him. Knowing Brady, he was just as nervous as Sheila. More so because he held the macho, Neanderthal belief that it was the man’s duty to protect his woman. How would he protect her when he didn’t even know where he was?

  Beneath the screeching guitars, Sheila discerned a ticking sound, as if someone had glued a time bomb to the engine block. She’d first heard the sound at a red light in Lubbock. She’d written it off after the ticking stopped. It was back again and persistent this time. She knew a little about cars from watching her father tinker in the garage years ago. A ticking sound might indicate dirty fuel injectors or low oil pressure. Or the engine was overheating. She eyed the needle on the oil gauge, which sat in the normal range. The car interior was so damn hot. At least with the window down, the wind tunneled through the vehicle and blew the sweat off her face. Now she spied the maxed out air conditioner and wondered why the vents pumped heat into the vehicle.

  She opened her mouth to suggest there was a problem and stopped, not wanting to fight again. They were lost and exhausted. Arguing wouldn’t solve anything. Brady’s T-shirt became a sopping rag, clinging to his flesh. Long sweat stains dripped from his armpits.

  The ticking grew louder. Sheila pictured a gremlin-like creature with a tiny hammer banging the engine beneath the hood.

  “Did you take the car into the garage like I asked?”

  He sh
ifted his jaw in answer. No, he hadn’t. Great. He was driving a failing car through the middle of nowhere in the Texas heat. If they broke down without cell coverage, they were in trouble. Hell, they might die out here.

  “Brady? You seriously didn’t take the car in—”

  “Will you shut up and let me think?”

  “It’s a seven-hundred-mile trip. What did you expect to happen?”

  “I had exams all week. When the heck was I supposed to bring the car in?”

  “You had time to drink with Paul and go to that party. You had time to—”

  “Shut up! Shut up!”

  He pounded the dash and made her jump. She’d never seen him like this before. Sheila shifted in her seat and turned to stare through the side window. He silenced the music.

  “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell.”

  She sniffled and wiped her eyes with her shirt collar.

  “Sheila, I’m sorry. I screwed up, I admit it. But we have two hours of driving ahead of us, and it’s nerve-wracking not seeing anyone around.”

  Brady placed a hand on her bare knee and gave it a gentle squeeze. He kept it there until she looked over at him. Brady wore a sheepish grin that made him appear childlike. She didn’t want to forgive him. He’d screwed up, big time, and they were in a world of hurt if the Focus died.

  “It’s not too late to turn around,” she said, fanning her face. “We passed through town twenty minutes ago.”

  Brady chewed his lip. “Twenty minutes to Dusk Corners, or ninety if we drive straight through. It’s not that much farther to Roswell.”

  “Is it worth the risk?”

  “Did you notice a garage in town? All I saw was a bar and a hotel. What if we drive all the way back to town and they don’t have a mechanic? Then we’ll really be in trouble. You want to dodge storms and go back to Lubbock? Better to keep going, I say.”

  She wondered if Brady had a point, or if he was whistling past the proverbial graveyard. The ticking sound had stopped while they considered their options. Sheila leaned across the seat and examined the gauges, unsure of what she expected to find. None of the indicators issued alarms.

  “Besides,” he said. “How do you suppose the locals would treat us? Two university students from Denver. That wouldn’t go over well in Dusk Corners.”

  “That’s prejudiced. Everywhere you go, people are people.”

  “So you’d feel comfortable walking into that saloon without me around?”

  An indecisive argument moved through Sheila’s chest and latched onto her breastbone. It was easy to act enlightened, as though the world would treat her as she’d learned to treat it through her liberal arts coursework. See the positive in everyone, and they’ll treat you with kindness. A sort of reverse-ostrich effect. Could she stroll into a sleepy cowboy town like Dusk Corners? Or walk through a slum?

  He shut off the air conditioner. “You know what? Lower your window. Might be good to get some air in the car.”

  “What about the bugs?”

  “No worries. What harm can a bug do? When we get to Roswell, I’ll have a mechanic check the car over, just to be sure. It’s been forever since anyone serviced the AC. Then again, I never drove through one-hundred-degree heat before. The ride back to school will be a lot more comfortable, I promise.”

  He set his hand on her knee again, and this time it stayed there. Her face flushed when his hand inched between her sweaty thighs.

  She touched his wrist, wishing they were in the hotel room with the door bolted and the curtains drawn. Her stomach no longer protested, the engine behaved, and the blowtorch sun tracking toward the western horizon no longer seemed intent on melting them.

  He drove with one hand, the other resting between her legs. Sheila forgot that she’d been angry with him five minutes ago, that his carelessness had placed her in this bind. She struggled to ignore the instrument panel, but her eyes kept drifting back to the lights. And wasn’t the temperature gauge higher than it had been?

  As they passed a farm with a red barn, Brady’s car made a high-pitched whining noise. They met each other’s gazes until the sound stopped. Neither spoke. There was something seriously wrong with the car, and the nearest mechanic was nowhere in sight.

  Sheila peeked in the mirror and saw a shimmering light flying at them, like a meteor shooting up the road. It was a truck, a big one. She twisted the mirror for a better view, drawing a curious glance from Brady. He checked the side mirror and rubbed his scalp. The truck was closer now, a black Dodge Ram 3500 rumbling on oversize tires. The dusty sheen made it appear as if the truck had crawled out of the earth.

  Sheila peeked at the speedometer. They were doing seventy-five, and the truck grew closer by the second. Brady had always had a lead foot. A state trooper had caught him speeding at twenty mph over the limit outside Denver last autumn. Still, Brady eased toward the shoulder, so the driver had room to pass. Whoever this maniac was, Brady wasn’t about to slow him down.

  The truck didn’t swerve into the other lane. It lurched forward like a hungry beast, its weed-and-grass-choked grille reminiscent of alligator jaws.

  “What’s this guy doing?” Brady asked himself.

  Sheila turned to look, and the driver punched the gas and pushed the truck up to their bumper. The sun made it impossible to see beyond the gritty windshield, but Sheila caught the impression of two men in the truck. The driver leaned over the wheel and glared at the tiny Ford Focus. Sitting in the passenger seat was an impossibly large man, so huge Sheila figured it was a trick of the light. The passenger filled the cab, with his head brushing the ceiling.

  “Move over,” Sheila said, swinging her head around again when the truck’s motor growled.

  “I’m on the shoulder. I can’t go any—”

  The grille clipped the Focus. Tires screeched as the vast, empty plains spun past the windshield like a lunatic amusement park ride. Sheila grabbed the door handle. The back end of the car whipped off the road and collided with something solid in the ditch. Sheila shot forward. The seatbelt yanked her back before her head could strike the dashboard.

  The car made a high-pitched whine, the sound of an injured animal dying. Sheila thought the collision had knocked Brady unconscious, but his eyes blinked in shock and disbelief. The crazy driver had run right into them.

  The doors opened on the Ram as Brady shook the fog out of his brain. His mouth fell open as he stared into the mirror.

  “Sheila, get out of the car.”

  “What?”

  “Run!”

  Sheila didn’t register his words until a humongous shadow filled the rear windshield. She threw the door open and stumbled on sea legs onto the shoulder. A hand grabbed her arm. She yelped, not realizing it was Brady. He tugged her forward, urging her to run as footsteps crashed behind them. She was too slow. Brady was faster than Sheila and could have outrun their attackers. Instead, he threw himself between Sheila and the two men.

  “Run until you find help, Sheila! I’ll catch up to you.”

  “What are you doing? Come with me!”

  She turned back, intent on dragging him away from the thugs. Brady set his shoulders and cocked a fist. The driver converged on Brady first. Brady clipped the man’s jaw and knocked him sideways. He raised his fist again and stopped. The monster staggered up to Brady, standing almost a foot taller than the ex–football player. He was more mountain than man.

  Brady slammed a punch against the man’s face, to no effect.

  “Run, Sheila! I can’t—”

  Brady’s warning cut off when the monster lifted him and swung him like a rag doll. Brady’s legs kicked uselessly as the man constricted his arms in a bear hug. Sheila screamed and ran faster. Behind her came a cracking sound, like someone crunching a boot down on eggshells. Brady issued an inhuman screech.

  Sheila ran blindly down the road, her vision blurred by tears. She heard them coming now, though she dared not turn back. If she did, she’d see the monster from the passeng
er seat roaring toward her like a runaway freight train, the man’s eyes red with bloodlust.

  A hand snagged her hair and ripped her backward. The driver threw her face-down to the macadam. Air rushed from her lungs, and something snapped in her ribcage. Blood poured from her mouth as she hacked and coughed. Sheila twisted onto her back and scrambled up to her elbows. The man grinned and tore her shirt open. His hand covered her mouth and shoved down, slamming her head against the blacktop. As she squealed and thrashed, he ripped the bra off her chest and snaked a slimy tongue into her ear. He meant to rape her.

  But it was the monster standing over the rapist’s shoulder that froze Sheila’s heart. Blocking out the sun, the beast pulled a knife from his pants pocket.

  Sheila’s eyes rolled back. This couldn’t be happening. It was just a horrible nightmare she’d awaken from.

  The monster dragged the rapist off Sheila and plunged the blade into her chest. The pain was real and unforgiving. Blood spurt and speckled the murderer’s face.

  Then there were only the cicadas chittering along the roadside as full darkness enveloped Sheila.

  2

  Logan Wolf stopped his Jeep Wrangler behind a minivan outside Clem’s Diner. He’d stolen the Jeep in Nebraska, filched a license plate off another vehicle near a shopping mall, and fixed the new plate onto the Jeep. His picture was a permanent fixture on the FBI Most Wanted list and had been since 2013, after Don Weber from CIRG, the Critical Incident Response Group, framed Wolf for murder. Once the Behavioral Analysis Unit’s most-respected profiler, Wolf had been a lock for the deputy director position until he returned to his Virginia home and found his wife, Renee, murdered in the kitchen, her throat slashed and a sack dragged over her head.