A Killer in the Wind by Andrew Klavan Read Free Book Online Page A

clutch him by the throat. I felt a thickness in my brain like fever. The room swam in mist all around me.
    We were standing in a vast foyer. A massive chandelier with prisms sent rainbows over the walls. There was a sweeping turn of stairs in the shadows beyond the chandelier’s reach. Dark wood banisters twisted out of sight into the upper stories. Mist.
    “I’m afraid I have to search you,” Emory said.
    I rolled my eyes. That’s what I thought an innocent man would do. “You’re kidding me.”
    “I know, I know,” he said, “but the world is full of philistines and we really have to be careful. Would you mind removing your overcoat?”
    I gave an elaborate sigh and stripped the coat off and handed it to him. He went through the pockets, examined it back and front, felt the linings. He was thorough and expert. He had done it before. When he was finished, he hung the coat neatly on a hanger in the foyer closet.
    “Empty your pockets please,” he said over his shoulder.
    I gave him my wallet, my phone, and my keys. He turned the phone off and set it on top of a short bureau by the closet door. He set the wallet there too. Then he looked at the key chain, pressed the flashlight button. He was satisfied when the light went on. He put the keys on the bureau beside the wallet.
    Finally he patted me down. Again, he was thorough and expert. I’ve snuck guns past the searches of some pretty hard-boiled street characters, but Emory and his soft white hands would’ve been hard to get around.
    He smiled then. “Sorry about that.”
    I shrugged. “Whatever. Can I have my stuff back?”
    “Just leave it there for now. You won’t be needing it anytime soon.”
    I didn’t want to leave the flashlight-beacon behind but I couldn’t think of an answer that wouldn’t arouse his suspicions.
    Emory gestured toward the archway behind him. “Shall we sit and have a drink together?”
    I hesitated. The clock was ticking. Emory had pressed the flashlight-beacon again so the fifteen-minute count had restarted, but it might not be enough. I didn’t want the tac team to come bursting in before I’d had a chance to get some solid evidence against him.
    I tried to move things along, pretending to be a nervous first-timer. “You know, I think I’d rather just . . . get on with it, if you don’t mind.”
    Emory laughed. “No, no, no. Don’t be that way. Everything’s fine. Now that it’s all out on the table between us, you and I are going to be good friends. Let’s get to know one another. Please.”
    There was no getting out of it. I glanced at my watch as I followed him through the archway. It was just after 9:05. Around 9:20, tac would come through that door like the Allies crossing the Rhine.
    The living room was expansive. There was one wall of high windows. They were dark except where the interior light winked off the raindrops running down the panes. The other walls had elaborate wallpaper and paintings—one green and hazy landscape after another with ruined temples on their hills.
    “Single malt, if I recall,” said Emory.
    I sat on the flowery sofa. The thickness in my head came and went and came again. The mist drifted in and out of the room’s corners. Finally, it gathered all around me, blurring the borders between my body and the room. Made me feel as if I were going to melt somehow into the fabric of the place. I shook the feeling off.
    Emory handed me a drink and took one of his own to a chair on the other side of a low coffee table.
    “To the good life,” he said, and drank. Then he laughed. “Oh, relax, really. This is part of the pleasure of it: being accepted for who you are. Not having to make excuses anymore. Not having to live a lie.”
    I barely sipped the scotch—barely sipped the sting off the surface of it—and yet it hit me instantly, hit me hard. I felt my stomach roll. I saw the world go dreamy. Thick white fog pressed hard against the windows across from me, threatening to permeate the