Darkness Falls Read Online Free Page A

woman. He walked up to one of her standing at the base of a cliff with a climbing harness on. Early thirties, pretty, with one of those smiles that made you sure you'd like her if you met her.
    "Who's this?" Beamon asked. According to the information Terry Hirst had provided, Erin had never been married and didn't have a sister.
    "You can't search my house without a warrant. I know my rights."
    "For Christ's sake, Erin. I'm not searching your goddamn house. I was just hot."
    Erin frowned. The suspicion on his face was now marred by a hint of guilt at being the obvious bad guy so far in this relationship.
    "Girlfriend," he said finally.
    "Does she live around here?"
    "She's dead."
    Beamon kept his expression impassive, but he was imagining drowning Terry in a toilet bowl for missing that. "I'm sorry."
    "She was an environmentalist. You know, one of those groups you people have been bugging and spying on because you think they're terrorists."
    Here we go, Beamon thought.
    "Her boat sunk with all hands a while back. I figure the government was probably behind it."
    "You know, they don't give us torpedoes," Beamon said, and immediately regretted it. He'd tried to leverage the fact that his fiancee was a psychiatrist into some kind of improvement in his own bedside manner, but so far he'd accomplished zip.
    "What do you want, Mark?"
    "Actually, I want you to look at a sample of some sludge."
    "What's in it for me?"
    "You seem to like sludge."
    "No."
    "How about the warm fuzzy feeling of helping your fellow man?"
    "You're getting colder."
    Beamon sighed quietly. "Look, we've gotten wind of a problem at a Saudi oil field, and with all the turmoil over there, we're already kind of living on the edge where supply's concerned. Shit, the people I rented my car from said they're charging six bucks a gallon if I don't bring it back full. So we'd like you to take a look and see what you think. Tell us if it's something we need to worry about."
    "Wait a minute," Erin said. "Did Rick Castelli put you up to this?"
    Of course he had, but, because of Erin's tone, Beamon decided to remain silent on the subject.
    "You government guys are so fucking melodramatic. Everything's a disaster to you unless it really is, and then you just ignore it. Well, I'll tell you what. I'm gonna ignore this."
    Beamon looked around the house at the dirty dishes on the coffee table, the broken glass on the floor, the dead woman staring at him from all sides.
    "So you can hang around here?"
    "Fuck you. It's a free country. You can't make me go."
    Beamon smiled. "Can't I?"

    Chapter 3.
    The helicopter finally began to descend, but that didn't bring the landscape into clearer focus. The sand seemed endless -- a monochromatic blanket so devoid of features that it was almost disorienting.
    Some people might have called it beautiful, and Erin Neal supposed it would have been if there weren't so many memories buried in those dunes. It wasn't far from here that the current chapter of his life had started. And now it just wouldn't end.
    He glanced over at Mark Beamon dozing in the seat next to him, headphones propped crookedly across his ears. After a brief burst of energy on the jet from Tucson, during which he had plowed through an enormous tray of sandwiches and a few smuggled mini-bottles of bourbon, practically the only time he'd opened his eyes all day had been to transfer to the Saudi Aramco chopper they were now on. As near as Erin could tell, the guy was either some kind of Zen master, a great actor, or else completely disinterested in wherever it was they were going. Probably the last one.
    As they got closer to the hot sand, the air got bumpy enough to cause Beamon to open his slightly puffy eyes and squint out the window. "Where are we?"
    "How the hell should I know? You haven't told me anything."
    Beamon stretched wildly and smoothed his thinning hair beneath the headphones. "I was supposed to be home trying on tuxedos, but you had to be a pain in the ass, so now