Hidden River (Five Star Paperback) Read Online Free
Airport, the brand-new Denver International Airport, to Boulder, to Denver, to a gun battle in Fort Morgan, to a bloody mess in a ballroom, another flight, the Old Continent, the Hidden River….
Aye, it was done.
The .22 was being walked to the frothing waters of Cherry Creek, where it would be cast in and would remain for years before being nudged along to the South Platte River. From there it would make its sliding way to the Platte, from the Platte to the Missouri to the Mississippi and finally the Gulf of Mexico. From there to some deep trench in the Atlantic. The seawater would break down the steel into its component molecules, the molecules would break down into their component atoms, the sun would expand, the oceans would boil off, the Earth would fry, all the stars would go out, the last remnants of intelligence in the universe would cobble together light from somewhere, but the second law of thermodynamics always wins and eventually blackness would reign in perpetuity, all remaining atomic nuclei disintegrating, electrons losing their spin and dissolving and the whole of creation a void of nothingness, a few faceless neutrinos separated by oceans of night.
Perhaps.
2: THE FIRST INCARNATION OF VISHNU
I was being tailed. He’d been on me since I’d left the house. I’d tried to give him the slip by going out the side door of the Joymount Arms but he was wise to that. Bastard. Maybe Internal Affairs from the peelers following me to see if he could get me on anything—but I’d made a deal with the cops, so that seemed unlikely. Maybe one of Spider’s goons after his dough. Maybe that seventeen-year-old from yesterday had told her father or brother or uncle and he’d come to knock me into next week. Maybe a lot of things.
He was good, so I decided to ignore him. My maneuvers had already made me late.
I hurried up, arrived at Dolan’s breathless.
Dolan’s, our local pub, a coaching inn back in the sixteenth century. Low ceilings, timber frame, whitewashed walls, nautical theme in the public bar, and the highlight of the pub—the large open-plan front room containing a huge fireplace, originally used for roasting spits. The fire always lit except in the very warmest days of summer, which tonight wasn’t.
I walked in. It was nine o’clock. The quiz had already started. Facey fumed at me for being late. John smiled and patted me on the back.
“How do, mate?” John said.
“Not bad,” I said.
“It’s Facey’s shout,” John said. But Facey was too pissed off to buy me a drink at the moment. Facey was a reasonably good-natured guy who played prop forward—the enforcer—in rugby, so obviously the good nature only went so far. Facey was the only one of the three of us that had a real job, though. He was in the full-time Reserve of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, which meant he worked about twelve days a month. John was also a peeler, but he was in the part-time Reserve, working only two or three days a month. John worked so little they allowed him to claim unemployment benefit.
I’d been the real supercop of the bunch. A high flyer in the RUC. A detective. John didn’t care about rank but Facey, desperate to get out of the Reserve and into the real cops, had always been envious of me. For the last six months, since my resignation, the positions were, if not reversed, at least more complicated.
If you think of me as Lenin in the coma, Facey is Stalin seizing the leadership of our little group, which only really meant he held the pencil at the pub quiz and you could hit him up for dough. He had tried unsuccessfully to change our team name from the Pigs to the Peelers, which he thought more dignified.
“Alex, are you having a Guinness?” John asked, a broad hint in Facey’s direction.
“Aye,” I said, taking off my sweater.
Facey, seething, had to bloody say something:
“Because of your lateness we could have dropped a point,” he growled, his eyes narrowing, a thing to behold, for Facey
Aye, it was done.
The .22 was being walked to the frothing waters of Cherry Creek, where it would be cast in and would remain for years before being nudged along to the South Platte River. From there it would make its sliding way to the Platte, from the Platte to the Missouri to the Mississippi and finally the Gulf of Mexico. From there to some deep trench in the Atlantic. The seawater would break down the steel into its component molecules, the molecules would break down into their component atoms, the sun would expand, the oceans would boil off, the Earth would fry, all the stars would go out, the last remnants of intelligence in the universe would cobble together light from somewhere, but the second law of thermodynamics always wins and eventually blackness would reign in perpetuity, all remaining atomic nuclei disintegrating, electrons losing their spin and dissolving and the whole of creation a void of nothingness, a few faceless neutrinos separated by oceans of night.
Perhaps.
2: THE FIRST INCARNATION OF VISHNU
I was being tailed. He’d been on me since I’d left the house. I’d tried to give him the slip by going out the side door of the Joymount Arms but he was wise to that. Bastard. Maybe Internal Affairs from the peelers following me to see if he could get me on anything—but I’d made a deal with the cops, so that seemed unlikely. Maybe one of Spider’s goons after his dough. Maybe that seventeen-year-old from yesterday had told her father or brother or uncle and he’d come to knock me into next week. Maybe a lot of things.
He was good, so I decided to ignore him. My maneuvers had already made me late.
I hurried up, arrived at Dolan’s breathless.
Dolan’s, our local pub, a coaching inn back in the sixteenth century. Low ceilings, timber frame, whitewashed walls, nautical theme in the public bar, and the highlight of the pub—the large open-plan front room containing a huge fireplace, originally used for roasting spits. The fire always lit except in the very warmest days of summer, which tonight wasn’t.
I walked in. It was nine o’clock. The quiz had already started. Facey fumed at me for being late. John smiled and patted me on the back.
“How do, mate?” John said.
“Not bad,” I said.
“It’s Facey’s shout,” John said. But Facey was too pissed off to buy me a drink at the moment. Facey was a reasonably good-natured guy who played prop forward—the enforcer—in rugby, so obviously the good nature only went so far. Facey was the only one of the three of us that had a real job, though. He was in the full-time Reserve of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, which meant he worked about twelve days a month. John was also a peeler, but he was in the part-time Reserve, working only two or three days a month. John worked so little they allowed him to claim unemployment benefit.
I’d been the real supercop of the bunch. A high flyer in the RUC. A detective. John didn’t care about rank but Facey, desperate to get out of the Reserve and into the real cops, had always been envious of me. For the last six months, since my resignation, the positions were, if not reversed, at least more complicated.
If you think of me as Lenin in the coma, Facey is Stalin seizing the leadership of our little group, which only really meant he held the pencil at the pub quiz and you could hit him up for dough. He had tried unsuccessfully to change our team name from the Pigs to the Peelers, which he thought more dignified.
“Alex, are you having a Guinness?” John asked, a broad hint in Facey’s direction.
“Aye,” I said, taking off my sweater.
Facey, seething, had to bloody say something:
“Because of your lateness we could have dropped a point,” he growled, his eyes narrowing, a thing to behold, for Facey
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