Road of the Dead Read Online Free

anyone else who’d caused him pain when he was a kid. But I knew I was probably wrong. It was a lot simpler than that. As Dad always said: Gypsy men are born to fight; it’s in their blood.
    I eventually found Cole in the very last car of the train. He was sitting alone at a table seat, staring blankly through the window. He didn’t look at me as I moved along the cartoward him, but I knew he was aware of my presence. I could feel him watching me inside his head. He continued pretending to ignore me until I’d walked the length of the car and stopped right next to him, and even then he didn’t say anything, he just turned his head and gave me a long, slow look.
    “All right?” I smiled.
    He didn’t say anything.
    I nodded at the empty seat opposite him. “Is anyone sitting there?”
    His face remained blank, his eyes sullen and hard, and I knew what he was feeling. He was feeling the same as he used to feel when we were little kids and I used to follow him around all over the place—forever getting in his way, getting on his nerves, never leaving him alone. He didn’t want me hanging around then because most of the time he was up to no good and he didn’t want me getting involved. He could never bring himself to say it, but he cared for me, and he was scared to death of seeing me hurt.
    Now, as I sat down opposite him, I knew he was feeling exactly the same. He didn’t want me with him because he knew he was heading for trouble, and the only thing that worried him about it was me.
    “Shit,” he said eventually.
    I smiled at him again.
    He shook his head and looked out the window.
    I shrugged and gazed around the train car. It was about half full. The other passengers were all fairly quiet—reading books and magazines, talking in low voices, staring silently through the windows. I wondered where they were going, and what they were going to do when they got there…and I wondered if they were wondering the same about me.
    “We should be at Reading soon,” Cole said to me. “You can get off there.”
    “I’m not getting off.”
    He looked at me. “I’m not asking you, Rube, I’m telling you. You’re getting off at Reading.”
    “Yeah? And what are you going to do if I don’t? Pick me up and carry me off? Throw me onto the platform?”
    “If I have to.”
    “I’ll start screaming if you do. Everyone’ll think you’re abducting me. The guards’ll stop the train and call the police and you’ll get arrested.” I smiled at him. “You don’t want that, do you?”
    He breathed in heavily and sighed. “Does Mum know you’re here?”
    “Of course she does. I wouldn’t just leave her without saying anything, would I?”
    “Did she tell you to follow me?”
    “No.”
    “But she didn’t try to stop you.”
    “She’s worried about you. She knows what you’re like.”
    “Yeah? And what am I like?”
    “You remind her of Dad.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “You know what it means. She doesn’t want you ending up like him.”
    “Yeah, well…”
    “Come on, Cole,” I said brightly. “It’ll be all right. I can help you.”
    “I don’t need any help.”
    “I’ll keep you out of trouble.”
    “There isn’t going to be any trouble. All I’m going to do is take a look around and ask a few questions.”
    “What kind of questions?”
    He sighed again. “I don’t know yet.”
    “I’m good at thinking up questions.”
    He rolled his eyes. “Tell me about it.”
    “And when it comes to thinking,” I added, “two heads are always better than one.” I grinned at him. “Especially when one of them’s yours.”
    He looked at me, exasperated. He’d had enough. I’d talked him into submission. He shook his head again and reached into his pocket for his cigarettes.
    “You can’t smoke in here,” I told him, pointing out the NO SMOKING sign on the window.
    He looked at it, looked at me, then put the cigarettes back in his pocket.
    “Shit,” he said.
    After that, we