Free The Midnight Road by Tom Piccirilli

soft,” Zero told him.
    “But she’d go for you, I suppose.”
    “It’s a well-documented fact that Betty liked dogs.”
    Maybe so, Flynn couldn’t remember.
    He wondered if Christina Shepard might be floating about, just out of eyeshot. Maybe seated in the row behind him, also coveting his Duds. Every now and again Zero would perk his head up and look off in some direction as if he were being called. His nubby tail would wag for an instant and he’d shiver with excitement, and it seemed he only remained with Flynn through a great act of will.
    The movie finished and Flynn rubbed his eyes as the lights came up. Zero followed him out past the poster for next week’s showing of the 1932 classic
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang,
starring Paul Muni. Zero started running around in happy circles, saying it was one of his favorites, and why didn’t Flynn just buy the DVDs?
    “I like the big screen,” Flynn said.
    “But the seats are murder.”
    Flynn hit the street and had to search the area twice before he spotted the undercover police car parked on the corner. He used a calling card at a pay phone to check in with Sierra.
    She said, “Why is it that you don’t have a goddamn cell phone?”
    “The idea of instant communication bothers me.”
    “I’d think after the past couple of weeks you’d want to have the police, the fire department and your local priest all on speed dial.”
    “Maybe after my next swim in a frozen harbor,” he said. “Anything on Christina Shepard’s father?”
    She paused, and he could hear her flipping papers. “Tell me again. What exactly did she say to you?”
    “Jesus Christ, you and your ‘tell me agains,’ you’re as bad as the cops.” Flynn shut his eyes and ran through the night of his death. “She said, ‘My father has been ill the last few years. He couldn’t care for Nuddin any longer. My brother became my responsibility. It came down to me to shoulder the burden. We take such things seriously in my family. Our name is important. Our history.’”
    “That word for word?”
    “Pretty close.”
    “I’m surprised you can remember, after what you went through.”
    “I remember that night very clearly. Shepard told his wife, ‘Your father’s never been right about anything in his life, that crazy son of a bitch.’”
    Flynn realized Sierra was looking out for him, the way a mother decides what’s good and proper to share with her children.
    She hesitated and cleared her throat. Flynn knew it wasn’t going to be good. She was trying to keep the fear out of her voice but he’d picked up on it anyway. The vibe was strong. He wondered what in the hell could manage to frighten Sierra enough for her to tap-dance around like this.
    “Okay,” Flynn said. “So tell me.”
    “Christina Shepard was born Crissy Bragg. The ‘Crissy’ is official, it’s on her birth certificate. Her father, Martin Bragg, was hard-core military, a lifer. She grew up an Army brat, mostly down South.”
    “I knew I heard the accent.”
    “Mother died of cancer when she was nine. She went out of this world in a bad way, in pieces. Had to have her vocal cords removed, then a lung, both legs. Et cetera.”
    “Jesus Christ.”
    “Ole Marty Bragg retired a colonel three years ago after he was diagnosed with brain cancer. Tumors. They wanted to open his skull, but he refused any kind of treatment.”
    Flynn figured he’d do the same when his time came. After seeing his own mother die slowly, surgery by surgery, he’d never go in for radiation or chemo or wait his turn to go under the knife. He didn’t have that kind of strength.
    “And six months ago he croaked?”
    “Two years back he started acting unpredictable in public. The cancer was eating into his brain’s center of rational thought. Wild shifts in personality. He started carrying his guns in public, thought the Russians and the Koreans and whoever the hell else were flying overhead. It became worse over time. He got off a