Shades of Simon Gray Read Online Free

certain of it. The passenger side of the front end was crushed like an aluminum can.
    He pushed forward, ignoring the police officer’s warnings. “I know him,” Kyle shouted at the cop. “I know that kid.”
    The police officer dismissed Kyle’s outburst with a few nods, calmly gripped Kyle’s upper arm, and steered him back into the crowd, just as the paramedics lifted the gurney into the back of the ambulance. Simon’s face was covered with blood; the white sheets on the gurney were soaked in red.
    Kyle couldn’t believe what he was seeing. This was Simon. This was someone he knew. “Is he dead?” Kyle grabbed the cop’s shoulder.
    The police officer patted Kyle’s hand, then gently lifted it off. “Your friend’s still alive,” he said. “Unconscious, but there’s still a pulse.” He shook his head and nodded toward the crushed Honda. “That’s one hell of a lucky kid, I’d say.”
    Kyle’s mouth was so dry he could barely swallow. The scent of Simon’s blood seemed to be hovering in the air. Kyle could almost taste it.
    It wasn’t until after the ambulance headed down Edgewood that Kyle realized his situation. Anything that Simon had left undone, any evidence left behind, any tracks they hadn’t covered, would be Kyle’s responsibility. And he had no idea what to do next.

A FEW HOURS PAST SUNRISE A MURDER OF CROWS , thousands of them, blackened the skies of Bellehaven, swooping overhead in ominous waves, barking their deafening caws. They covered the roads like fresh asphalt, devouring the dead frogs. They blanketed stream banks, their sharp beaks plucking shrieking peepers from beneath rocks.
    People stood at their windows, terrified to go outside. Mothers unpacked their children’s lunches and told them to go back to bed. They weren’t about to risk sending them into this black blizzard.
    When the phone call came, in the midst of all this chaos, Danny Giannetti was in the shower, filling the room with steam, losing himself in a mist so thick hecouldn’t see his hand rubbing the bar of soap along his other arm. He had no idea Bellehaven was under siege.
    The rap of knuckles against the bathroom door startled him. The bar of soap thudded to the bottom of the tub.
    “Phone,” his sister, Marni, yelled, jiggling the knob to see if the door was locked. She stood barefoot with her head bent close to the door, listening as she zipped up her jeans. She was two years older than Danny and had a full-time job as a mechanic at the Gulf station in town. A fine line of stubborn grease was always ground into her cuticles.
    “Take a message,” Danny yelled.
    “I’m not your damn secretary,” Marni screamed back, then headed down the hall to finish getting dressed.
    The sliding glass door on the shower thumped against the wall as he slammed it open, wrapped a towel around his waist, and still dripping, padded down the hallway, leaving wet footprints on the carpet.
    “Yeah?” Danny barked into the phone.
    “He smeared his Honda all over the Hanging Tree.”
    The voice belonged to Kyle Byrnes. Danny knew the voice as well as his own, had known it since kindergarten.
    “Who?”
    “Gray.”
    There was a moment of silence as Danny balanced the phone between his chin and his shoulder while he tightened the towel before it could slide from his hips. “What are you talking about?”
    “The accident last night. I saw it.”
    When Danny didn’t respond, Kyle’s tone sharpened. “Did you hear what I said?”
    “You saw it?”
    “Yeah, on my way home from Devin’s.”
    “Are you sure it was Gray?”
    “It was Gray. I saw them loading him into the ambulance.”
    “Is he dead?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Listen, we’ve—”
    “Drunk? Was he drunk, do you think?” Danny was having trouble focusing. Simon must have walked past that tree on his way home from school every day since kindergarten, must have driven by it a hundred times since he’d gotten his license two months