You Are Destined to Be Together Forever
Contents (10)
You Are Destined to Be Together Forever is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Bantam Books eBook Original
Copyright © 2014 by Dean Koontz
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
BANTAM BOOKS and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.
eBook ISBN 9780804180931
Cover design: Scott Biel
Cover images: (man) Claudio Marinesco; (woman) © Stephen Carroll/Trevillion Images
www.bantamdell.com
v4.0
ep
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
By Dean Koontz
About the Author
One
My four-hundred-pound friend and mentor, P. Oswald Boone, the famous mystery writer, says that although he has in his refrigerator cheeses older than I am, sixteen is not too young to write worthwhile prose, as long as I write about what I know, which in my case means a girl named Stormy Llewellyn, the ghost of Elvis Presley, brutal murder, and revenge from beyond the grave.
In late May, the annual spring fair had come to Pico Mundo, California, where I had lived all my life, on the edge of the Mojave Desert. On Friday, I borrowed Terri Stambaugh’s car so that I could take Stormy to the carnival that had set up its many attractions on the fairground midway. Terri was my boss, the owner of the Pico Mundo Grille, where I worked as a fry cook twenty-four hours each week during the school year, forty hours each week during the summer.
I couldn’t borrow a car from my father, because he had walked out on us years earlier. I couldn’t borrow a car from my mother, because such a request would stress her. When stressed, Mother made veiled references to suicide, and sometimes she retrieved the pistol from the nightstand drawer in her bedroom, caressing its contours with more affection than she’d ever shown me. When I was a child, which was a shorter period of time for me than it was for most people, my mother sometimes implied that she might take me with her if she decided to consummate her romance with Death. My mother is beautiful, and to anyone who never lived with her, she seems to be a genteel and pleasant lady, if slightly aloof. I moved out when I turned sixteen, into a tiny apartment above a garage, which I pay for by mowing the lawn and doing general maintenance chores for my landlady.
At 4:30, Stormy met me behind the Grille, where Terri’s Mustang was parked. “Hey, odd one. You look better than a stack of your best pancakes.”