Kill Switch Read Online Free Page B

was a cop?”
    â€œPolice chief in Appleton. Said he’d drop the charges if Dad married my mother. Dad told me it was better than doing fifteen years hard time.”
    â€œHow’d your mother feel about that?”
    â€œShe wanted to abort me, but my grandfather wouldn’t let her. And no daughter of his was giving birth to no bastard child, either. She hated my father from the second she said ‘I do.’ ”
    â€œBecause he got her pregnant.”
    â€œBecause she knew being hitched wasn’t gonna stop him from boning every gash he could sweet-talk himself into.”
    â€œDoesn’t sound like your father had a lot of respect for women.”
    â€œSure he did. And he taught me the same.”
    â€œHow old were you when he started ‘teaching’ you?”
    â€œAround five, I think. ‘Lot lizards’ll bang anybody,’ he’d say, ‘so if you want to do one of them, enter at your own risk ’cause you don’t know what’s living up there.’ ”
    â€œWhat’s a ‘lot lizard’?”
    â€œCarnival sluts. PBQs were a lot safer.”
    â€œAnd a PBQ is ...”
    â€œCarny-speak for ‘possum belly queen.’ Those are the girls who’ll have sex with you in the compartment under a truck. Dad said they were cleaner because they were more picky about who they did. But he said the best ones to lay are townies like my mother, because once the carnival rolled out, you’d never have to see them again. Turns out he was wrong about that, huh?”
    What kind of father talks to his kid this way? Claire might as well have said it aloud because Quimby read her face and flashed that evil grin.
    â€œHe didn’t just teach me. He showed me.”
    I have no choice; I’ve gotta know . “Showed you what?”
    â€œYou know, like how to have a good time watching porn videos,” Quimby said matter-of-factly. “Then when I was seven, we were in Decatur, Illinois, with the carny, and he had me watch him do a nineteen-year-old to show me how to get a girl off.”
    There it is again—that grin . I’m gonna wipe it off his face .
    â€œTodd ... your father never touched you, did he?”
    She had barely finished the sentence when Quimby flew out of his chair.
    â€œYou calling my father some kinda homo?”
    â€œNo, but since your mother abused you, I had to make sure,” Claire said calmly, though inside she was all Jell-O. “Now why don’t you sit down?”
    Quimby glared at her, then obeyed.
    â€œMy father didn’t hurt me,” he bellowed. “He told my mother if she ever laid a hand on me again, he’d kill her. He took me on the road with him whenever I didn’t have school so I wouldn’t have to be near her. That man saved me from that rancid bitch.”
    â€œYou and your dad were pals,” Claire said. “He really loved you.”
    â€œHow many fathers teach their sons to be a man?” Quimby asked. Claire blinked. “Not many. Not like my dad did with me.”
    Keep him on track and he’s mine.
    â€œWere you with him that day?”
    â€œYeah, Fat Ralphie smoked too much crank the night before, and they couldn’t get him outta bed, so Dad was manning the shooting gallery and putting the moves on this girl Sara.”
    â€œDid she travel with the carnival?”
    â€œNo, she was a greenie. That’s what we call a townie who comes to work for us while we’re there. She was just off a shift in the ticket booth and Dad’s bragging how good I am with the gun.”
    â€œYour father was using you to meet women.”
    â€œHe did it all the time.”
    â€œObviously because it worked.”
    â€œExcept Sara wanted to get into my pants.”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œ ’Cause she bent over to hug me and buried my head between her massive titties. Then she kissed me, except it wasn’t no peck