Johnny V and the Razor Read Online Free Page A

“Yeah?”
    “Everything go all right with Donnelly?”
    If Nick scented anything, he’d be on Sloane’s back trail like a hound. He pushed thoughts of Johnny out of his mind. “Went slick as oil on water.”
    Nick puffed smoke toward the ceiling in slow, lazy rings and nodded. “Sleep good.”
    Out in the bar, Sloane caught Stephen’s eye just as he was delivering a drink order. When he came over, Sloane said, “Upstairs.”
     
    R IDING across country when you were nineteen and most men around you were bigger and better fed, you didn’t admit to being scared about anything. So Johnny had never told anyone how much storms frightened him. He’d seen tornadoes lift whole houses into the sky and smash them apart like wood toys.
    Thunder rolled across the sky. He turned over and drew the heavy blanket over his head. Sloane’s place didn’t have any windows. But the whole roof was made of what Johnny thought of as glass bricks. The sky showed through, distorted. When lightning flashed, the whole bedroom lit up, like flash bulbs from a hundred cameras.
    The storm was getting closer. Lightning crackled. Thunder clapped, and it sounded like it was right over his head. Johnny jumped out of bed, ran toward the door, and stopped. Past the door, he heard something worse, something he’d heard in boxcars in the middle of the night.
    Someone was talking in a low, pleading voice. Johnny didn’t have to hear the words to know what he was saying. He’d sounded just like that. It hadn’t changed anything.
    The door was cracked maybe an inch. No light came in. He pressed his eye to the crack.
    First he saw Sloane’s face, the hard face of a man who’d stopped listening. He was pushing his unzipped pants down with one hand and bending a boy over the couch, a boy about Johnny’s age, naked, ass up. Trembling, Johnny saw that the naked boy’s eyes were squeezed shut. He was gritting his teeth, and his whole face was deep red. Sweat or tears were running down his cheeks. Whatever was about to happen, it wasn’t the first time.
    Johnny knew he should go back to bed, should press the door closed, but he couldn’t. Just hours ago, he’d wanted Sloane to have him, to give him anything he wanted. Now he could see what Sloane wanted, and how he wanted it.
    Thunder rolled overhead again, louder this time, shaking the walls. Like he’d woken up from a bad dream, Sloane backed away, looking at Johnny’s door. "Get dressed.” He handed the boy his clothes. “And tell my brother I said I’ll pay off your debt. Go home.”
    “You don’t have to—”
    “Hurry up,” Sloane said. “Before the storm gets you.”
    The boy pulled his pants on, grabbed his shirt, and went out, shutting the door quietly behind him.
    Sloane bent down, out of Johnny’s view, and when he stood up, his chest was still bare, but his pants were done up. He moved silently across the living room, toward Johnny’s door, barefoot. Johnny fought the instinct to slam the door and lock it. He moved backward carefully, desperate to stay on his feet, not wanting to find himself on his back looking up at Sloane.
    Sloane pushed the door open. “What are you doing up?”
    One bad step, and Johnny would be on his back, looking up at Sloane’s hard on. Trying not to let his lips tremble, he said, “Thunder woke me.”
    Sloane moved past him and sat on the bed. “Storms scare you?”
    Uneasy at the thought of Sloane behind him, Johnny turned around. “Yeah. Sometimes.” But lying to Sloane made Johnny even more nervous. “No,” he said. “All the time. Even little ones.”
    Sloane got a look on his face like Johnny had a lot worse things to be scared of. “I need to tell you something,” he said.
    “What?”
    “If anyone asks where I found you, don’t talk about Donnelly. Don’t tell anyone you were his driver.”
    The storm was really revving up. Wind was blowing over the glass roof. He was alone with Sloane. He should have stayed with the Packard. “I