Near Dark: A Thriller by Brad Thor Read Free Book Online Page B

and had always complimented her. They had made a remarkable couple and it had only made sense that they would get married. Both of them had been certain that they were ready.
    They’d had a beautiful ceremony at Oslo Cathedral,followed by an extravagant reception on the roof of the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, and then had honeymooned in Portugal.
    After a year, Gunnar had begun talking about having children. Sølvi had known that it would impact her career. But he had wanted children more than anything and she had wanted to make him happy. So, she had given in.
    But no matter how hard they tried, she couldn’tget pregnant. Eventually, they had gone to see a specialist.
    The news hadn’t been good. Because of a prior medical procedure, Sølvi was incapable of conceiving. They had both been devastated, but for Gunnar, it had been the absolute end of the world.
    Things had only gotten worse when, in a moment of candor after a bottle of wine, Sølvi had confided in him about the night she was raped and confessedto the abortion she had sought once she had learned she was pregnant. The operation had brought about a terrible infection, which, only now, did she realize had rendered her infertile.
    But instead of being her rock, instead of being the best friend she thought she would always have to lean on, Gunnar had left her.
    She had come home from work and he was gone—along with the dog they had boughttogether. A week later, he served her with divorce papers. Her spiral back into drugs didn’t take long from there.
    When Carl Pedersen found her, pulled her out, and forced her to get clean, she made herself two promises. One, she would never, ever touch drugs again. And two, she would never, ever fall in love again.
    Turning away from the window, she began to pace, her thoughts returning to Pedersen’smurder. There were many avenues of investigation she could take. While there had been no physical evidence discovered at Pedersen’s home, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t turn up something, eventually.
    The problem was that the first forty-eight hours after a murder was the most crucial for finding clues and tracking down the killer. After that, the odds turned against investigators—dramaticallyso. People’s recollections of what they saw or heard began to fade. Physical evidence started to degrade. Short of a confession or DNA showing up in a database, the crime wasn’t very likely to be solved.
    Because Pedersen’s corpse had been in the house for days before being discovered, the killer already had a significant head start. Worse than that, the killer appeared to be a professional, someonewho had targeted Pedersen because of his position as an intelligence officer. Whoever the assassin was, he probably wasn’t the type to offer up a confession or to allow his DNA to be uncovered.
    With Kripos—Norway’s National Criminal Investigation Service—leading the murder investigation, there were plenty of experienced hands ready to run down even the smallest of leads. That left Sølvi and NISthe freedom to get creative.
    She already had their best teams combing CCTV footage from bus stations, railway stations, border crossings, and ports of entry. Anyone suspicious was run through facial recognition and compared against their databases, as well as all Interpol red notices from the last decade.
    The killer hadn’t always been a pro. At some point, somewhere, hemust have made a mistake.As far as she was concerned, no stone was too small to overturn. She was going to find that mistake.
    But to find it, she was going to have to come at the case from a much different, much more personal angle.
    Walking over to her desk, she glanced at the enormous etching hung on the wall behind it. It depicted Huginn and Muninn— thought and mind —the two mythological ravens said to bring the Norsegod Odin his information.
    She sat down, logged onto her computer, and thought for a moment. Then, she tapped out an email. Reading it