After the Dark

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After the Dark Page 21

by Max Allan Collins


  “Middle of nowhere. Motel.”

  He said nothing, getting out of the car cautiously, as if he didn't trust his muscles to work—or the exoskeleton, for that matter.

  “You can have a shower or bath,” she said, “which I'm gonna do, too . . . but what we really need is rest.”

  They were to the door now, and she had her arm around his waist, helping him walk inside the motel room.

  He allowed her to take her bath, and when she had freshened up, and stood in the open bathroom doorway, using the motel's drier on her hair, she found herself alone. She was just about to get concerned when he stepped back into the room, and explained that he'd just run across the highway to a convenience store, where he'd picked up a few toiletries, including a shaver.

  He showered and emerged in twenty minutes, the scruffy beard gone, his shirt off, drying his hair.

  “You hungry?” Logan asked. “Or should we just go to bed?”

  She was already under the covers.

  “I thought you'd never ask,” she said, and raised the sheet for him.

  Max Allan Collins has earned an unprecedented eleven Private Eye Writers of America “Shamus” nominations for his historical thrillers, winning twice for his Nathan Heller novels, True Detective (1983) and Stolen Away (1991). In 2002 he was presented the “Herodotus” Lifetime Achievement Award by the Historical Mystery Appreciation Society.

  A Mystery Writers of America “Edgar” nominee in both fiction and non-fiction categories, Collins has been hailed as the “Renaissance man of mystery fiction.” His credits include five suspense-novel series, film criticism, short fiction, songwriting, trading-card sets, and movie/TV tie-in novels, including In the Line of Fire, Air Force One, and the New York Times best-selling Saving Private Ryan. His many books on popular culture include the award-winning Elvgren: His Life and Art and The History of Mystery, which was nominated for every major mystery award.

  His graphic novel, Road to Perdition, is the basis of the acclaimed DreamWorks feature film starring Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, and Jude Law, directed by Sam Mendes. He scripted the internationally syndicated comic strip Dick Tracy from 1977 to 1993, is cocreator of the comic-book features Ms. Tree, Wild Dog, and Mike Danger, has written the Batman comic book and newspaper strip, and several comics miniseries, including Johnny Dynamite and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, based on the hit TV series for which he has also written a series of novels and a video game.

  As an independent filmmaker in his native Iowa, he wrote and directed the suspense film Mommy, starring Patty McCormack, premiering on Lifetime in 1996, and a 1997 sequel, Mommy's Day. The recipient of a record six Iowa Motion Picture Awards for screenplays, he wrote The Expert, a 1995 HBO World Premiere, and wrote and directed the award-winning documentary Mike Hammer's Mickey Spillane (1999) and the innovative Real Time: Siege at Lucas Street Market (2000).

  Collins lives in Muscatine, Iowa, with his wife, writer Barbara Collins; their son, Nathan, is a computer science major at the University of Iowa.

  Dark Angel: After the Dark is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A Del Rey ® Book

  Published by The Random House Ballantine Publishing Group

  TM and Copyright © 2003 by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Random House Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  www.delreydigital.com

  eISBN: 978-0-345-46434-7

  v3.0

 

 

 


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