The Tempest A.J. Scudiere (books to read in a lifetime .TXT) 📖

least he was pretty certain they were unadorned, only the last inch of the handle was visible on each of the six blades that had crucified the man to the wall.

Lee thought he had seen lethal in his time, but this looked like the body had been alive when it had been pinned there, and the buried knives were sunk into wall studs. It was the only way that the heft of the large, muscular man wouldn’t have come forward, bringing drywall down with him. That took planning.

The face of the man on the wall sagged, eyes and mouth open, blood running in thin rivulets from the edges of each. He had suffered a thousand punctures and surface slices in his final moments, and the woman carried exactly the implements to do it. Although she must have cleaned them thoroughly before sliding them into their leather homes along her lean legs.

Stepping back she admired the tag. And Lee, for the first time, read it.

In payment for murder, rape, and the destruction of families.

One by one, she used claw-like throwing stars to pin obituaries, newspaper articles, and pieces of police reports to dead flesh. After a moment Lee no longer cared what she was tacking to the corpse, he just wondered where in hell the stars were coming from. She would simply produce another and another, like a sick magician.

She turned to smile at him again, and his breath hitched. A wailing started deep at the back of his head.

He’d been wrong. She was just a girl.

The whine grew stronger, and he recognized it for what it was‒sirens, more than one. If the girl knew what was coming, she gave no indication, just tipped her head and walked out the back. She moved with a precision that made her look inhuman; he wouldn’t have batted an eyelash had she simply climbed the walls or even passed through them. And, though he watched her use the door, Lee heard none of the usual sounds of human movement.

She went down the back steps and flitted away into the woods, an evil sprite or a minion of a vengeful god. Lee wasn’t sure.

Beyond the walls, tires squealed and car doors slammed. They didn’t call out, but he could hear them out there, gathering steam and numbers. The cops had an idea that something had gone down here. But he was certain they hadn’t been expecting this.

His irritation was flaring again, and that was a bad sign. There was no room for emotion in this job. So with a sigh, he pushed the back door open with his elbow, and headed straight for the woods. As much as he would have liked to follow her, his priority was getting out of here.

He walked through foliage he knew too well‒deeper and deeper, following the path he had worn over the past week, his focus on the walk, on removing himself from the situation‒until he finally emerged. No matter what evidence they found, the boys in blue would know it wasn’t his work.

He unlocked the old sedan that was nearly mangled on the outside, but purred like a hot kitten. Climbing in, he slammed his fists against the leather wrapped steering wheel.

Damnit, the bitch had stolen his kill.

Owen Dunham had everything, and every goddamned little bit of it was sitting at the dinner table with him. His wife looked at him funny, her Russian, tilted eyes knew from the look on his face, even as she passed the buttered corn. Somehow she always knew. Charlotte was painfully oblivious, and he would have to either break her heart or leave it to Annika to foot that bill.

He reminded himself that he loved his job, and that he did good work, and that he could sleep well at night. Other people slept well at night because of him, too. So he reached down into his pocket to fetch the vibrating phone.

Charlotte saw the movement, her bright eyes clouding as the story of having her work held up as an example of some of the best third grade writing the teacher had ever seen faded on her lips. For a moment Owen wondered if Charlotte’s ‘fiction’ had included this.

He offered a repressed I’m-so-sorry-baby-but-I-have-to-get-this smile to his daughter. There was nothing to give to his wife. So he stood and flipped the phone open as he went into his office in his own little version of the separation of church and state. “Dunham.”

“Phoenix.” It was a voice he knew all too well, even though he’d only once shook hands with the man and saw a face to put to the sound. Randolph just did dispatch. Just spent his time interrupting Owen’s family dinners and school plays. “You aren’t going to believe this.”

Owen rubbed the back of his neck and wondered what the hell had gone wrong this time, because that’s all that this could mean. “My kid got an award at school today, she was just telling me about it. This had better be good.”

There was a smile in Randolph’s voice. “Oh, this is real fucked-up good. Your grudge ninja’s back.”

“Shit.” The ninja had laid low for almost six months. Nothing they could pin on the guy. Sure there were a few things that might have been his work. “Are they sure? Before I leave my family-”

“I’ve seen some preliminary photos. Open your e-file. If this isn’t your ninja I’ll eat your socks at the end of the trip.”

That was a serious bet, Owen knew. He tucked the cell phone handily against his shoulder, knowing it gave away his age. The move never should have been attempted with a phone this small, certainly not while hacking into his encrypted computer files. The stance was a throwback to a day when the phones had been large enough to cradle in the crook of your neck, back to when he’d first become familiar with the gadgets and had still thought they were pretty cool. Before he’d grown to hate the things.

The