Free The Headsman by James Neal Harvey Page B

instincts told her to just scoop up the orders and get out of there. But she didn’t.
    “Yeah. I think you’re a great gal. And you know, you could have a real good future here. You could move up, see? Get to be like my assistant.”
    She made no reply, which Boggs apparently misunderstood. The smile widened. “That’d mean a big jump in salary, lots of perks. Why don’t we have dinner some night soon, talk it over, hmm?”
    She froze. His hand had slid up under her skirt and was stroking the back of her thigh. Before she could yell or run or belt him it moved higher and squeezed her buttock.
    Now she did move. As hard as she could, she chopped the edge of her left hand against the inside of his arm. With her other hand she slapped his face. The blow knocked him back in his chair, his cheek reddening, his mouth opening and closing like that of a fish. She left the orders where they were and hurried out the door, slamming it behind her.
    There were more people in the showroom now; all three salesmen were busy with customers. But no one seemed to notice her. Which was a good thing; her face was burning with anger and embarrassment. She went back to her desk and sat down, struggling to get her emotions under control.
    Damn that fat fool anyway . Why the hell couldn’t he leave her alone? After this fracas he’d be sure to fire her. And then what? She’d have to go job-hunting again, start all over somewhere else.
    It wasn’t that jobs were so hard to find—especially for a good-looking girl with a college degree who didn’t want a high-level position. It was just that she felt so different from other people—and so vulnerable. She’d been through a whole string of jobs since she’d graduated from Shippensburg, usually losing them when one of her spells came over her. And now the thought of going through the process again was depressing. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Whatever would happen would happen. She’d just have to cope with it. For now she’d do her work as well as she could, and if Boggs fired her, so be it.
    The morning newspaper was still lying open on her desk. She picked it up and was about to toss it into the wastebasket when her gaze fixed on the story of the missing Mariski boy. As she looked at the words they blurred, and then the newspaper and the desk seemed to dissolve away, and she was no longer sitting at her desk at Boggs Ford, but was somewhere suspended in space, in a place without walls or dimensions, as if she were floating in limbo.
    A series of images appeared. She saw a pond with marshy edges, grayish brown cattails rising from the spongy ground. The water of the pond was a dirty iron color and there was a thin sheet of ice covering part of the surface. A stone wall ran along one side of the pond, and beyond the wall was an old barn, its red paint weathered and one of its walls collapsed from rot. She saw a brown corduroy jacket and a mop of brown hair and battered high-top shoes. She saw pale flesh and staring opaque eyes.
    “Karen?”
    Startled, she looked up, feeling as if she’d been abruptly roused from sleep, jolted out of a strange dream. Charley Boggs was looking down at her.
    He smiled, the same oily stretching of his mouth. “Here are those orders, honey. All signed. Let me have the other stuff when you get to it, okay?” She nodded dumbly, and he turned and strode toward the showroom, greeting a customer with his hand extended.
    Karen looked at the newspaper again, staring at the story of the missing boy. After a moment she swept it into the wastebasket. She felt like crying, like getting up and running away from here. But the truth was, she couldn’t run away. Not ever. Because this thing, this vision—whatever it was—would always be with her. Wherever she ran, it would be there. She could run away from here, but she couldn’t run away from it .
    Now the question was, what should she do next?
    In her heart of hearts she knew the answer, and she