Deadly Pursuit by Ann Christopher Read Free Book Online Page B

fired.
    Pain exploded through his knee, shooting out the top of his head and through the soles of his feet to the floor. He dropped like a concrete slab, yellingwith agony and pissing himself, curling into the fetal position before he’d even finished falling.
    His vision dimmed, went dark, and came back again. Now she was standing over him, looking down with what might have been regret, but you had to have a soul to feel sorry about anything.
    Anger slowly penetrated his consciousness. Through the groaning and the slobbering and the agony, one persistent thought gave him strength: he would not go out like this. He was a retired sergeant with the United States Army who’d served two tours of duty in Vietnam and he would not fucking go out like this.
    So he unclenched his hands from the bloody and ruined remnants of his knee, uncurled his body, and glared up at his killer. Shaking convulsively, he unclenched his jaw and willed his voice to be clear and strong.
    Hail Mary … Hail Mary … Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death … Hail Mary … Mary …
    “Fuck. You.”
    Annoyed, Payton Jones stared down at the old man. Not because she cared if the crazy fuck bit it on the office floor now rather than in a hospital with prostate cancer or some such shit a few years from now, when his time came naturally. She didn’t.
    The problem was: this job was beginning to require a lot of legwork and a fair amount of collateral damage. Collateral damage meant more risk to her. Under normal circumstances she’d lie in wait until she had a clear shot at the target and would never show her face to anyone. This whole
break-into-the-file-cabinet-to-find-Parker’s-address-so-she-could-kill-him-tonight
operation was riskier than she’d been told.
    More risk meant she was entitled to more money.
    More than the bonus she’d been promised a little while ago if she took care of this Jackson Parker character ASAP.
    She’d find Parker. If the old man didn’t tell her before she clipped him—and it was beginning to look like he wouldn’t—then she would surely find him in the file cabinet over there as she’d originally planned, or maybe in the old man’s phone and cell phone records of recent calls.
    If
those
turned up nothing, then she had Plan C, pretty little Amara Clarke, to follow up with, and she knew how to find Amara Clarke. But no matter how things unfolded, this job was a lot more work than she’d expected, and the pay needed to reflect it.
    Impatient now, she raised her weapon and stared down the length of her arm to the old man, who was now babbling and crying, his face a disgusting mess of snot and tears.
    “Hail Mary, Hail Mary,
please—
”
    “Let’s talk about Jackson Parker,” she told him.

Chapter 5
    Luck was with Jack. There was an empty parking space on the street in front of his five-story brick apartment building, and he slipped his battered red Jeep into it. The usual suspects were loitering on the sidewalk despite the late hour: prostitutes who knew better than to approach him over there, drug dealers and their apprentices over there.
    They all watched with interest as he unloaded his mountain bike, the only quality thing he owned, from the rack, hefted it over his shoulder and climbed the steps. He could almost see the
cha-ching
of easy money in their greedy eyes as they stared at the bike, which was exactly why he kept it safely inside his apartment.
    He’d stayed out longer than he’d planned, but the weather was good and the trails were clear if a little muddy after yesterday’s sleet, and he hadn’t had a day off in three weeks. So, after a sleepless night filled with images of Amara, the images all the more graphic because now he knew the silky-smooth texture of her fragrant hair and the scent of berries and flowers onher skin, he’d gotten up at the crack o’ dawn, thrown some protein bars, trail mix and water bottles into his backpack and driven for hours up into the