Talker 25 (36 page)
Authors: Joshua McCune
I thought I’d killed him.
For the briefest moment, he focuses on me, and I’d swear his scowl softens and his eyes brighten. In that glance I recognize the boy from Shadow Mountain lookout. Then he looks away.
“Arabelle has some silly ideas for the island,” Allie says. She sounds excited.
“An ice cave is not silly,” Baby says. Based on Allie’s snort, I assume Baby’s in broadcast mode. “And don’t forget the snowfield where we can play ball.”
“Snow will melt.”
“Not if it’s cold.”
“It’s cold here. I don’t like the cold, no, no.”
“Somewhere else, where it’s a nice cold.”
“Tell her she’s silly, Melissa.”
The chain saw goes quiet. Nobody else seems to notice.
Real? Not real?
What about him?
I just don’t know anymore.
I’m not sure I ever did.
I turn back to Allie and Baby. “Wonderfully silly.”
I grab Allie’s hand, press my forehead to Baby, and find something happy to hold on to, something I know is real.
So very real.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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JOSHUA M
C
CUNE
grew up in a military family and now lives in San Antonio, Texas, with his wife. He worked as a mechanical engineer prototyping robots for the oil industry and testing them for the semiconductor industry before becoming an author.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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Cover art © 2014 by Sammy Yuen
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
T
ALKER 25
. Copyright © 2014 by Joshua McCune. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
The text of this book is set in 12-point Fournier MT
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data TK
ISBN 978-0-06-212191-2 (trade ed.)
EPub Edition October 2013 ISBN 9780062121912
14 15 16 17 18
TK
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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