Storm Runners Read Online Free

made it possible.”
    “You’ll burn in hell for what you did.”
    “Hell would be better than this,” said Tavarez. “Now you understand how bad it is, don’t you? Living without the ones you love?”
    “If they ever let you out, I’ll find and kill you,” said Stromsoe.
    “Life can be worse than death,” said Tavarez. “So I’m going to let you live. Live first in the smell of their blood. Then live without them, month after month and year after year. Until you begin to forget them, until your memory is weak and uncertain. Because you know, Matt, wives and lovers and even children can be forgotten. They must be forgotten. But an enemy can live in your heart forever. The more spectacular his crime against you, the more durable your enemy becomes in your heart. Hate is stronger than love. I tried to kill you but I’m much happier that I didn’t. Tell me, are you blinded by fury?”
    “Inspired by it.”
    “Pray to your God for vengeance, to the one who ignores you. And welcome to prison. The bars here keep me from freedom. The bars around your heart will do the same to you.”
    With a dry little chuckle, Tavarez clicked off.
    Stromsoe hurled his drink against the side of his house. He turned and lurched toward the garage. He pushed through the construction site tape, got tangled and kicked his way out as his legs burned with pain. He pulled open the garage door and flipped on the light.
    Here it was, his personal ground zero, the heart of his loss.
    He forced himself to stand where they had been standing. The concrete floor was thick with drywall dust and he swept aside some of it with his foot. The floor had been bleached. He looked at the wall in front of him—new drywall. And the wall to his left—new drywall too. He looked up at the new framing that was being roofed with new plywood and new paper and new mastic and new tiles. He didn’t see a drop of what he was dreading to find. Not one tiny trace. New was good.
    He walked slowly around the Ford to the far corner of the garage. Here were some cabinets he had built many years ago. The bottom cabinet was long and deep and fitted with duckboards. The slats were now stained from years of two-cycle oil spills and gas-can seepages, leaking weed eaters and blowers and chain saws.
    Stromsoe bent over and rocked the red plastic gas can. It sloshed, heavy with fuel. He hefted it out, twisted open the cap, and pulled out the retractable spigot. The fumes found his nose.
    The smell of escape, he thought.
    He backed the Taurus into the driveway, set the brake, and killed the engine. Back in the garage he poured gasoline where Hallie and Billy had last breathed, then across the cement floor, out the door and across the bricks of the little courtyard to the back porch, then through the slider and into the dining room, kitchen, living room, the bedrooms.
    He set the can down by the front door, got a plastic bag from under the sink, and slid most of Hallie’s jewelry into it. He found a pack of matches in the coins-and-keys drawer of his dresser. Then, in Billy’s room, he added three of his son’s favorite stuffed bears to the bag.
    He went back to the front door, opened it, and continued his gas trail outside to the porch. The door he left ajar. Dropping the gas can and the plastic bag to the porch boards, Stromsoe then fished the matches out of his pocket. The moths and mosquito hawks flapped against the porch lights and the waves swooshed to shore in the dark.
    He sat down to think it over.
    With his back to the door frame he brought up his knees and rested his face on his forearms. The nail wounds in his body flared like struck matches. His ears rang. He could feel his glass eye moving against the skin of his arm, but the eye itself felt nothing. The matchbook fell from his hand. He asked God what to do and got no answer. He asked Hallie and Billy what to do and they told him not this—it was dangerous and stupid and wouldn’t help. Hallie’s argument that