The Devil's Highway Read Online Free Page A

transparent plastic raincoat. Over her shoulder was a backpack. She looked like she might have just come from a high school classroom, where she had sat, texting her way through a lecture on The Middle Ages or Applied Calculus. She fixed me with intensely bright blue eyes as I walked in. She got to her feet and headed towards me.
    “Roland Longville?” she called out, popping chewing gum loudly in the process.
    “Yes?”  
    “I’m Briana Caldwell, Brad Caldwell’s sister.” That stopped me. The Caldwells hadn’t even mentioned that they had a daughter, though maybe in their minds, there was no reason that they should have.
    “How can I help you, Briana?”
    “I want to help you . Find my brother, I mean.”
    “Well, I’m sure that I can—“
    She popped her gum loudly to interrupt me, which I thought was novel.  
    “No you can’t, because you don’t know where to look. Brad made sure of that. Well, he thought he did. But he forgot something.” She unzipped the backpack and pulled out a laptop PC. “This is Brad’s.”
    “And this laptop will lead me to Brad?”
    “If you’re smart enough, it can.” She rolled her eyes and started talking at an extremely fast pace. “Listen, Mr. Longville. Brad had another side to him that my parents and his dorky friends didn’t know about. He didn’t think that I knew, but I dated a guy, Hans, who knew about everything that Brad was into, and he told me everything. I mean, before I dumped Hans because he’s a dork. I just never told Brad I knew about the stuff he was into. But when he pulled this disappearing act, I knew that he’d gone away to try to be a part of this weird scene he’s into.”
    She took a breath, and I got a question in. “What weird scene is that?”
    Instead of answering, Briana popped her gum, reached into her backpack, and produced a book. It was a hardback, with a battered red dust cover. On the cover was the picture of an older man. His stern expression and buzz-cut hair announced unmistakably that he had some sort of military pedigree. The Redemption Manifesto, the title was proclaimed in a thick bold script; by Col. Elihu Tolbert, United States Army (ret.)
    Briana chewed viciously and went on. “Brad’s laptop was being fixed; the computer repair service sent it back a few days after he disappeared. I messed around on it to see if there was something useful. Then I found this dumb book of his in his closet. I guess he had it memorized, or maybe he had more than one copy. He was that into all this stupid stuff.”
    I took both the book and the laptop from her. “Thanks, Briana. What do you know about where Brad was headed when he disappeared?”
    She shrugged. “I don’t know, exactly, but Hans—that’s the dorky guy I dated—he said that there was an online forum, that the dorks who were into all this crap logged on to and discussed what this Tolbert guy wrote and believed, and he told me Brad was on that forum so much they made him a mod—you know, a moderator? You don’t get to become a mod on a forum unless you know everything about the forum and what it’s all about. My guess is if you look at Brad’s web surfing history, you’ll learn something.”
    “Thanks for your help, Briana. I guess that you must really love your brother.”
    Briana rolled her eyes dramatically, and popped her gum again. “Are you serious ? I’d like to break his face. I mean, my dad’s really sick, you know?” Her eyes quit rolling and teared up a little, and her tough act faltered.  
    “It just really sucks that he’d pull this on my parents right now. I know that he’s a legal adult, but our parents really need him, and he runs off to be with these geeky people to play soldier or something.”
    “Thanks again, Briana. As I’ve told your mother, I’ll do everything I can to bring Brad home safe.”
    She nodded, but her expression was defensive. She took a step back and lowered her voice. “Don’t tell anybody I gave you this