BACKTRACKER by Milo Fowler (e book reader txt) 📕

She'dlove it there in the heart of town. That's where she belonged, to see and beseen in all that glitz and glamour. Not spending her nights locked up in acramped apartment surrounded by drooling zombie neighbors Linked up and livingvirtually.

She never uttered a word of complaint, not when the pipes froze inthe winter or when the paper-thin walls let them in on every moan and toiletflush from the adjoining units. She'd married beneath her when her lips hadloosed those fateful words: I do. Her father had been on governmentpayroll at the time, and the Horton family had raised their only daughter withthe finest things that a limitless line of credit could afford. Yet she gaveall that up. For love.

Why me?

Muldoon remembered it like yesterday, standing in that grandballroom at their reception. Most of it was a blur of flashing lights, loud jazzand an open bar, but one thing he remembered with crystal clarity: his smilingbride in his arms, an angel in white gliding across the dance floor, her gorgeous eyeslocked with his.

What have I ever done to deserve this amazingwoman?

He knew then and there that he'd do whatever was in his power tokeep her happy. And so far, if he took her word for it, he'd succeeded. Hersmile, those soft, dark eyes filled with adoration that she turned on him thefirst moment she saw him in the morning or at the end of a day spent too longapart. The same eyes he'd stared at in wonder in the middle of that ballroom aseverything around them blurred into insignificance.

Years had passed. Bills piled up. Cases came and went. Someclients could pay, some couldn't. Muldoon didn't run a charity, but he knewwhen the cause was worth the cost. Take the Cyrus Horton case, for example. Nota credit to be made there, but it would give his wife the peace of mind shedeserved. And it just might be the case that put his agency on the map, so tospeak. The Feds hadn't even bothered looking for the eccentric inventor, fromwhat Muldoon could tell. And as for the police, offering lip service was whatthey were best at. Not so good at following through.

For now, Muldoon was his own boss, and he liked it that way. But ifever there came a time when he and Irenacouldn't make ends meet, if the bills kept outnumbering the clients who couldpay, then there was always the standing offer from Sergeant Armstrong over atthe precinct: work for the force as a police detective. Be someone else'sgrunt. Solve cases—or not so much—the way they did. Live the rest of his lifeknowing he'd sold his soul for nothing more than a measly if consistent line ofcredit.

"Destination," the car droned as it eased to the curb infront of the block-long expanse of tenements, shrouded in shadows beneath thefoggy moonlight. "Park or idle?"

He unfastened his harness as the door rotated upward."Park."

With a wide yawn, he stepped out and onto the curb, hands thrustdeep into his coat pockets against the night's chill. He watched as his cardoor dropped into place and the engine accelerated the vehicle away, around thecorner toward the parking structure under the first level of ground-floorapartments.

In the quiet that followed, his gaze wandered up the street, thendown, looking but not really seeing the endless blocks of identical greybuildings, every window dark but for the occasional solitary vigil here andthere. Insomniacs. Too stressed out on life to enjoy the simple pleasures—likea good pillow and a mattress with enough support to cradle the cares of theworld to their nightly grave, only to be resurrected in the morning by thestress of another twelve to fourteen hours. But that was all right. He'd be awakeby then, alert and on top of things once again. Strong enough to bear theburdens of this town on his broad shoulders.

What am I doing out here?

He turned away from the vacant street to face the imposing,nondescript monstrosity that was none other than glorious Tenement 3166, homesweet home jutting up from the concrete as if it had grown there untended fortoo long. The lobby door slid jerkily aside as it sensed his approach, haltingitself only to groan and force the next few centimeters, then an entire meterbefore it gave up.

"Good effort," Muldoon muttered. It wouldn't be longuntil he'd have to start opening this thing the old-fashioned way, with a kickor a shove. Maybe both.

With another half-stifled yawn, he made his way to the stairwelland mounted the flights, one after another in the flickering fluorescent light.That same obnoxious sense of déjà vu tried to assert itself, but he beat it tothe punch. It was only natural that he'd find these well-traversed steps andgraffiti-stained walls familiar. This was his home. Like it or not, this waswhere Harry Muldoon hung his hat for the night.

He expected the stairwell to be empty and silent, like the streetsoutside. He expected the hallway up on the eighth floor to be the same, as itwas every night. He never saw his neighbors. Most spent their lives locked uptight inside their apartments, living on the Link. Maybe once or twice he'dpassed them in the halls, but he couldn't be sure he recognized them. It wasthe way things were. People kept to themselves until one of them went missing.

That's when they might request the services of a certain private investigator. If he was lucky.

So it was with a certain degree of curiosity that he reached theeighth floor hallway and heard what sounded like a rubber ball thumping againstthe wall. Thump, rebound, caught. Then again: thump, rebound, caught.Methodical, practiced. Rhythmic.

It stopped as soon as he approached.

She looked just a few years old, small for her age. Vacant, saggingeyes, dark behind a tangled mess of black hair, stared up at him without a hintof curiosity. Yet they stared nonetheless. In the palm of her hand, clenchedbetween fingernails that were long and unkempt, was a grey rubber ball. Itremained frozen in her small claws, hovering at eye level where she'd caught itjust a moment ago. Now the rhythm was off. It would never