Free Remaking by Blake Crouch

REMAKING
    a short story by
    Blake Crouch
     
    SMASHWORDS EDITION
     
    * * * * *
     
    PUBLISHED BY:
    Blake Crouch on Smashwords
     
    Copyright 2010 by Blake Crouch
    Cover art copyright 2010 by Jeroen ten
Berge
    All rights reserved.
     
    PRAISE FOR BLAKE CROUCH
     
    Crouch quite simply is a marvel. Highest
possible recommendation.
    BOOKREPORTER
     
    Blake Crouch is the most exciting new
thriller writer I've read in years.
    DAVID MORRELL
     
     
    REMAKING is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and
incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
     
    "Remaking" originally appeared in Thriller
2 , edited by Clive Cussler and published by Mira Books, June
2009.
     
    For more information about the author, please
visit www.blakecrouch.com.
    For more information about the artist, please
visit www.jeroentenberge.com.
     
    Smashwords Edition License Notes
    This ebook is licensed for your personal
enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to
other people. If you would like to share this book with another
person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you
share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it,
or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return
to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for
respecting the author's work.
     
     
    * * * * *
     
     
    REMAKING
     
    Mitchell stared at the page in the notebook,
covered in his messy scrawl, but he wasn’t reading. He’d seen them
walk into the coffeehouse fifteen minutes prior, the man short,
pudgy, and smoothshaven, the boy perhaps five or six and wearing a
long-sleeved Oshkoshbgosh—red with blue stripes.
    Now they sat two tables away.
    The boy said, “I’m hungry.”
    “We’ll get something in a little while.”
    “How long is a little while?”
    “Until I say.”
    “When are you gonna—”
    “Joel, do you mind?”
    The little boy’s head dropped. The man
stopped typing and looked up from his laptop.
    “I’m sorry. Tell you what. Give me five
minutes so I can finish this email, and we’ll go eat
breakfast.”
    Mitchell sipped his espresso, snow falling
beyond the storefront windows into this mountain hamlet of eight
hundred souls, Miles Davis squealing through the speakers—one of
the low-key numbers off Kind of Blue.
     
    Mitchell trailed them down the frosted
sidewalk.
    One block up, they crossed the street and
disappeared into a diner. Having already eaten in that very
establishment two hours ago, he installed himself on a bench where
he could see the boy and the man sitting at a table by the front
window.
    Mitchell fished the cell out of his jacket
and opened the phone, scrolling through ancient numbers as the snow
collected in his hair.
    He pressed talk.
    Two rings, then, “Mitch? Oh my God, where are
you?”
    He made no answer.
    “Look, I’m at the office, getting ready for a
big meeting. I can’t do this right now, but will you answer if I
call you back? Please?”
    Mitchell closed the phone and shut his
eyes.
     
    They emerged from the diner an hour
later.
    Mitchell brushed the inch of snow off his
pants and stood, shivering. He crossed the street and followed the
boy and the man up the sidewalk, passing a candy shop, a grocery, a
depressing bar masquerading as an old west saloon.
    They left the sidewalk after another block
and walked up the driveway to the Antlers Motel, disappeared into
113, the middle in a single-story row of nine rooms. The tarp
stretched over the small swimming pool sagged with snow. In an
alcove between the rooms and the office, vending machines hummed
against the hush of the storm.
    Ten minutes of brisk walking returned
Mitchell to his motel, the Box Canyon Lodge. He climbed into his
burgundy Jetta, cranked the engine.
     
    “Just for tonight?”
    “Yes.”
    “That’ll be