Devil’s in the Details by Sydney Gibson Read Free Book Online

over my entire body. The first close match was a tall man who was an online organic produce seller. Tall, lanky, lean and long blonde hair that made him look female if you squinted. The second result was a twenty two year old girl who had a million and half selfies of her surfing out in Southern California. Lean, lanky and long blonde hair, but clearly too young and too far away to be the blonde I was looking for, that and she had blue eyes.
    The third search result brought me to the faculty page of for the Naval Academy. To a portrait shot of a woman with light blonde hair in a full dress uniform of the United States Navy. I gasped as I recognized the slate grey eyes in the portrait as the same ones that were my lighthouse in the storm that terrible night. Staring at the photograph, I felt myself shivering. From nerves, excitement and a thousand other things I couldn't place. The woman was even more beautiful in her naval uniform, slightly smiling at the camera in a way that was professional, but kind.
    I scrolled down to look for her name, my nerves boiling to the edge as I took my time. Worried that there wouldn’t be a name, that this would be too easy to find her, but at the bottom, there was a name.
    Commander Victoria Bancroft, USN Ret. – Instructor of Military History and Tactics.
    I leaned back in my chair, curling up and rubbing my arms to chase away the shivers. "Victoria. Your name is Victoria."
     

    Thomas sat next to me on the gaudy leather couch that he no doubt paid for with his cartel money. We continued watching the action movie he had playing on the impressive large screen television when I broke in through his back door near the kitchen. He had the sound up so loud on his movie theater grade sound system, that he never heard, or saw me, as I stuck the needle in his neck. Injecting him with a tranquilizer that would get muddled in with the rest of the prescription drugs I was about to force feed him.
    "How can you watch this crap, Thomas?" I looked over at him, reaching up to drop four more pills down the thick tube I inserted in his throat to make the delivery of pills and booze that much more natural. I followed the pills with a chaser of nice bourbon I had bought just for the occasion. "It's all digital effects, no real talent in the acting. And look? I mean a car physically cannot do that. Physics just doesn't work that way."
    Thomas was alive for the moment, but with every minute that passed, he was sliding deeper into an overdose coma and by the end of this terrible movie, he would be dead. I glanced at my watch, pulling back the edge of my black rubber gloves, I was right on schedule. Reaching into my bag, I flicked the top off another prescription bottle of suboxone. Shaking out a small handful of the pills, I sprinkled the rest around Thomas and on the floor. Standing up, I started dropping pill after pill down the tube and looked around the living room. I spotted his briefcase tucked in the corner by the coat rack near his front door. I walked over to it and rifled through it, easily finding the burner cellphone, some bank receipts and a plane ticket to Colombia, hidden in a side pocket. I sighed, looking over at Thomas, "You’re really dumb, Thomas. You've made this far too easy for me."
    I haphazardly tossed the items around the living room for when the police showed up, they could close the case quickly with all the evidence laid out for them. Chalking it up to another untraceable cartel hit and leave it at that. The old man and the tea drinkers would be happy with the lack of attention brought by Thomas's death being labelled an overdose and having the cartels information link to Congress, severed.
    I moved back to Thomas, picking up the bourbon and reaching to dump the rest of the pills and the bottle down his throat, when he suddenly lurched forward. Coughing, gagging, his hands flailing up to grab at his throat and the tube I had shoved in there. "Shit."
    I rushed over to the man,