Road Less Traveled Read Online Free Page A

“And even if this was some sort of freak cold front, it wouldn’t have hit that fast. Or with no warning. Or with her being the only one affected.” As if that were a cue, his phone rang again.
    â€œOkay, not just her,” he corrected a minute later. “That was David Boyd. He’s got the same freak cold snap.”
    â€œIsn’t he also on Albany Court?” Allison asked. Carter nodded. So did Fargo and Jo. A few months back, Boyd’s house had been one of many that had been switched, exchanged for a house from outside Eureka. That had been a nightmare! For obvious reasons, most of the addresses of the houses involved had stuck in their heads.
    Carter’s phone rang again; this time it was Dan Harlowe on Durbridge Drive, which was one block over from Albany Court. By the time they’d reached GD’s main lobby again, Carter had received four more calls, all of them complaints or concerns about the sudden chill. And all of them from the same part of Eureka.
    â€œSomething’s causing the temperature to plummet, but only in a four-block radius,” Jo summed up. “What could do that? A freeze ray?”
    â€œDon’t even joke about it,” Carter warned. He glanced at Allison, but she shook her head. Good, no freeze ray. That was a relief.
    Allison pursed her lips a second later, however. “I think I know what could be the cause, actually.” Her gaze settled on Jo. “Albany, Durbridge, Pershing, Restin—Silver Road’s right around there, isn’t it?” Carter was annoyed for a half second that she’d ask Jo and not him, before he admitted to himself that he would have done the same thing. He knew his way around the town, of course, but Jo seemed to have a perfect map of Eureka imprinted in her brain. She knew every single street, corner, alley, building, streetlight, turn signal, stop sign, and park bench. He knew for certain because a couple times he’d tried quizzing her. That never lasted long.
    Right now his deputy was nodding. “It’s right between them, actually. Albany and Durbridge cross it; Pershing’s on one side and Restin’s on the other.”
    â€œThat’s what I thought.” Allison grimaced. “Savile.”
    â€œIs that another street?” Carter asked her.
    â€œNo, it’s a name—Steve Savile.” Allison led them into her office and tossed him and Jo towels while she talked. He guessed they were there for when she nursed or changed Jenna, her little girl, but right now he was just happy they were clean and dry. “He’s one of our researchers. Been working on a portable ambient heat sink. He must have taken it home with him.” She shook her head, looking for all the world like a mom dealing with a kid who’d just done something a little silly. Which, come to think of it, probably summed up a lot of her day-to-day interactions with GD’s scientists. Far too many of them still acted like little kids. Really, really smart little kids.
    â€œOkay, so this portable any-bent heat sink is going in reverse and freezing the neighborhood instead?” he asked. He could tell from the looks he got that this wasn’t the case. Oh well. He was used to it by now.
    â€œA heat sink,” Fargo told him, taking on that pompous tone that made him even more annoying, “is a device you attach to a heat source, like a computer. It siphons off the heat and energy so the source can run without overheating. A portable heat sink would be one you could carry around and attach to any device whenever you needed it.”
    â€œExactly,” Allison agreed. “But Savile’s been working on something a little more universal. An ambient version. You don’t have to attach it to anything—it draws the heat from its surroundings, cooling everything down at once. You could set one of these in a computer bank and maintain all of them