Delaney's Shadow

She pressed harder against the tree. A piece of bark crackled beneath her back. Delaney caught another whiff of the pond, but the smell of the mud didn’t turn her stomach anymore. It was countered by the clean tang of Max’s soap. Her flesh tingled where he touched her, even though she knew it wasn’t really a touch. That made no difference to her pulse.

Max brought his face to hers. His eyes gleamed. “We don’t have to talk.”

She moistened her lips. “Uh, Max . . .”

“There are plenty of more interesting things we could try.”

“Let’s stick with talking.”

“If I were a real man, I would kiss you.”

“If you were real, you wouldn’t want to.”

He smiled and stroked his thumb across her lower lip. “Don’t bet on it.”

Pleasure shot through her body. Her legs shook. She locked her knees to keep herself upright . . .

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

DELANEY’S SHADOW

A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the author

PRINTING HISTORY

Berkley Sensation mass-market edition / August 2011

Excerpt from
Dream Shadows
by Ingrid Weaver copyright © by Ingrid Caris.

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ISBN : 978-1-101-51723-9

BERKLEY
^®SENSATION
Berkley Sensation Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
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BERKLEY
^®SENSATION and the “B” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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This book is dedicated to Mark, my husband, my partner in dreams and in life.

PROLOGUE

ON THE DAY JOHN MAXWELL HARRISON TURNED SEVEN, he knew he would kill Virgil Budge. He knew it with the same conviction that led other children to believe they would be astronauts or cowboys. Killing Virgil was more than a dream for Max; it was his purpose, his duty. His destiny.

Moving slowly, biting his lip to keep the whimper inside, Max grasped the willow trunk for balance and eased himself down. The moss was thick and spongy here in the shadows. It took only a few minutes for the cool to seep through his jeans and numb the place where Virgil’s belt had left a trail of blood.

This morning, when the old man was snoring too loudly to hear the floor creak, Max had gone into the bedroom and picked up that belt. He’d liked the way the leather had felt in his hands. It had made his hair tingle and goose bumps rise on his arms, like the crackle of power in the air before a thunderstorm. And while he’d stood there, feeling the power, he’d watched the splotches of beer on Virgil’s undershirt quiver, and he’d watched the spit trickle out of the corner of Virgil’s mouth, and he’d wondered what it would be like to hit him.

Would he scream, the way Mommy always did? Would he cry until his nose ran in messy streaks into his mouth? Would he turn purple and then blue and have to hide in the trailer until the marks on his face went away?

Max had wanted to kill him then. He’d wanted it so badly his tongue had tasted like rust and his hands had shaken until the belt buckle chattered like teeth. The picture in his head had been so clear. He saw himself wrap one end of the leather around his fist the way Virgil did, and he saw himself lift his arm and whip the other end down again and again and again and then climb on the sour-smelling sheets and kick the middle of that sagging belly and jump up and down on that sneering mouth. He wouldn’t have cared about the blood and tears and snot that would get on his clothes, because he’d be glad; he’d be glad.

Max sniffed and wiped his eyes with his T-shirt. Virgil was right. He was just a dumb chickenshit. He hadn’t been able to do it. He’d put the belt back on the floor. He’d run out of the trailer. Then he’d climbed over the fence and crossed the old tracks and taken the path to the edge of the pond to the place where no one would find him.

A jay squawked from a branch overhead. Max willed his tears away and tilted his head back against the bark to look up. One of these days, he was going to be like that bird. He was going to fly away. And he’d take Mommy with him. After he killed Virgil, they would live in a house with white curtains and a brand-new fridge that didn’t smell like beer. They would get a puppy and call him Skippy.

Max closed his eyes and let the picture build in his head. It was a trick he had learned to make the pain go away. He’d discovered it the first time Virgil had broken his arm. If he concentrated really hard, he could pretend he was someplace else.

Before the picture was halfway done, there was a rustling from the shore of the pond. Max blinked, squinting against the glare from the water.

A girl tiptoed along the edge of the mud. She was so small the bulrushes almost hid her, but he could see flashes of her blonde hair and sky-colored dress.

He knew who she was. She lived in the big Wainright house on the other side of the woods. He had seen her down here with some old lady lots of times when he was hiding in his secret place. She wasn’t supposed to be at the pond by herself. She was even too little for school. She was just a baby.

She bent a cattail downward, her face scrunched up as she twisted it off the stem. The brown velvet puffed its cottony seeds into her hand, and she laughed, startling the jay out of the tree.

Max eased back into the shadows. This was the Wainrights’ property. Max didn’t want to be caught here. Old man Wain-right was even bigger than Virgil, and he looked awful mean the way he walked bent over that cane. Max was glad that Virgil didn’t have a cane. It would hurt worse than the belt.

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