Читать книгу The Man From Falcon Ridge - Rita Herron - Страница 10

Ten-year-old Rex Falcon stared in horror at the yellow crime-scene tape wrapped around the Lyle house. It was dark now, the night sounds adding to the eeriness. When he’d gotten here, he’d peeked inside the window and seen the gory murders. Then the sheriff and his deputies had pushed him and his brothers and mother into the yard with the other neighbors and refused to let them talk to Rex’s father.

Just because his daddy had found the bodies, they were treating him as if he’d killed the people inside.

His mother hugged the boys close to her. “You boys go on home. You shouldn’t be seeing all this.”

“I’m not going anywhere till they let Daddy go,” Rex said, hands fisted.

“Me neither,” his middle brother Deke said.

His youngest brother Brack jutted up his chin, his eyes wide. “I’m staying, too.”

An image of the dead people flashed into Rex’s head. There was so much blood. It looked like a river on the kitchen floor. The mother lay in it. The boy cuddled beside her. The father, too. It covered his hands and face, and his head….

“Little girl’s dead, too,” a neighbor murmured behind him. “Found her blood near the river.”

“Randolph Falcon.” Sheriff Cohen jerked Rex’s daddy to a standing position and handcuffed him. “You’re under arrest for the murders of the Lyle family.”

“No!” His mother collapsed into a neighbor’s arms, sobbing.

His father’s hawklike eyes pierced Rex as the sheriff yanked him down the steps toward his squad car. “Take care of your mama and brothers for me, son.”

Rex shook his head in denial. His father’s words had sounded so odd, as if he wasn’t coming back. But they couldn’t take his father away and lock him up.

He was innocent.

“Daddy!” His brothers chased after the sheriff, and Rex ran after them.

A bald eagle that had been perched on top of the porch swooped down and soared toward the car, its talons bared. Rex’s father nodded toward the bird. The animal knew what it was like to be caged. He was a bird of prey. He needed freedom.

Just like the Falcon men.

The blue light flicked on, the siren screeched and a cloud of dust rose behind the police car. Rex gathered his brothers and mother and walked them home, but it was dark inside and cold and so quiet the house echoed like a tomb. It was as if his father had just died.

Fear and anger and sadness knotted Rex’s throat. He wanted to do something to get his daddy out of jail. He wanted to make his mother stop crying. And his brothers…they were heartbroken.

But he felt so helpless. He was only ten. A stupid ten-year-old boy. What could he do? He didn’t know anything about lawyers or courts or anything else.

Tears pushed against his eyelids, but he blinked them back. Big boys didn’t cry.

But he had to be alone and think, so he fled into the mountains, silently venting his pain in the midst of the snow-laden pines.