Outburst Read Online Free Page B

swerving right at them. Stumbling toward them like a drunk as he reached into his jacket. Dear God, thought Todd, wiping at his eyes. That was no umbrella, that was a gun.
    “Look out!” screamed Todd into the roar of the storm.
    Forrest, still grinning, glanced at Todd, wiped the water from his face, and shouted back, “What?”
    Todd pointed at the assailant, but Mark Forrest never really saw what was happening, never understood. There was another explosion, this one from the gun, and in a split second a bullet slammed into Forrest's deep chest. It threw him back and he stumbled across the bridge. Clutching the railing for support, Mark Forrest looked down at himself, saw the watery blood washing down his chest, next looked up at his killer, and only then perhaps realized what this was all about.
    As Todd started to rush to Forrest, he froze. The small man was whipping around, his yellow slicker a blur as he trained his pistol on Todd. Reflexively, Todd threw himself to the side, fell as he scrambled to escape, and behind him heard the single burst of a gun.
    And then the heart of the storm struck them all.
    Todd tried to stand up, to rush farther away, but was blown on his side like a twig. As he landed in a puddle, he glanced back, saw the assailant hurled aside by the wind. A wall of water seemed to crash over Todd, rain that bit and pelted so hard that he could barely see two or even three feet. He looked to the side, thought he saw Mark Forrest somehow hanging on to the railing. And still the wind gained in strength, barreling down the river, blasting everything in its path. Todd crawled to his knees, tried to stand, and thought for sure this was it, he was going to be sucked into the skies. He threw himself to the side, grabbed at the base of a lamppost, and hung on, hoping to hell that just this once he was stronger than Mother Nature. Above it all, he heard a rattling and ripping and raised his head to see a sign, one of the historical markers, blown from its stand. As it came hurtling at him, Todd clutched his head, but it wasn't enough, for the sign struck him with such force that Todd's head seemed to explode. He tried to open his eyes but couldn't, and the massive summer storm went from dark and overpowering to totally black and quiet.

2
     
    As soon as the elevator chimed and the doors eased open, the man rushed out of the lift and down the hotel hall, his wet head bowed, his chest heaving. He reached into the pocket of his jacket, felt for the plastic room key, pulled it out, then slipped it into the lock of his room and opened his door.
    Shit, he was wet, for nothing had prepared him for the ferocity of the storm. In fact, he thought, carefully locking and bolting the door behind him, he was as wet as if he'd just jumped into a swimming pool. They rarely had storms like that where he came from, and certainly not with that kind of thunder and lightning.
    Water dripped onto the maroon carpet from his raincoat as he hurried past the sleek bathroom, past the sliding mirrored doors of the closet, and into the spacious room that was lined on one side with a single huge window. His hands shaking, he pulled off his coat and dropped it on the edge of the messy bed, then made directly for the dark-wooden desk, where he pulled open a center drawer. He grabbed a piece of the Hotel Redmont's tasteful stationery, reached to the top of the desk for one of the hotel's ballpoint pens, then hesitated one single moment. Yes, he thought, his heart thumping, his head pounding. There'd been no other choice. He had to be enterprising. Yes,
enterprising
, and so with trembling hands he scribbled it down:
GMF
. Absolutely. No doubt about it. And he wrote it down again and again.
GMF. GMF. GMF. GMF.
    Satisfied that he'd done everything right, he dropped the pen and turned to the window, which was sealed as tight as a fish tank.
    Lifting aside the thin white curtain in front of the glass, he looked out at the clearing skies, at the