Red-Hot Vengeance by Sandrine Spycher Read Free Book Online Page A

was shocked to see López in such a bad shape. Bandages covered his burnt hands. There were several small plasters on his face and neck. Worst of all, López couldn’t breathe by himself. He was kept alive by the machine next to his bed.
    Carter closed his eyes. He breathed in slowly. He opened his wet eyes and walked toward the bed. He couldn’t even take his friend’s hand into his because of the bandages. So he just looked at him.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. He wiped the tear before it even appeared, and left the room.
    **
    When Williams and Cowley arrived at López’s place, the door was ajar. They both took out their guns and prepared to defend themselves. They entered the flat pointing their weapons in front of them. But there was no one.
    “Wow, look at this mess,” Cowley said, putting her gun away.
    “Yep. I wonder what they were looking for,” Williams answered.
    The place had been completely ransacked. Every drawer had been thrown to the floor and emptied of its contents. Williams knelt to look at the papers on the carpet. There were phone bills, some postcards from Spain, and a few pictures of López with a woman which Williams would have preferred not to see.
    “Did you find anything?” he asked Cowley.
    “A lot of things, but I don’t think these are what whoever did this was looking for.” She handed him a reservation for plane tickets. “Looks like he was going on holiday.”
    “Yep. He was gonna visit his parents in Spain with his sister.”
    Williams gave the paper back to Cowley, and approached the desk. He looked into the scattered papers, most of which were cocktail recipes downloaded from various websites. Williams then saw a little red book.
    “What’s this?” he wondered aloud.
    He picked up the booklet and went through it. An address book. Most of the entries contained name, phone number, and email address; some also presented a street name. One page was missing. Williams soon noticed that what was gone was letter C. Then he remembered his chat with López at the pub.
    “I think I know what those people were after,” he said. “Or rather who: Reese Carter.”
    **
    Carter was unfortunate enough to arrive at López’s flat after the police. There was no way now that he could go look around the place. And he couldn’t even impersonate a cop because they all knew who he was. He walked back and forth in front of the building, watching the officers’ moves. Something was wrong. There were too many of them, and they all carried boxes on their way out.
    Carter had to find a way in. He didn’t exactly know for sure that Vaughn was implicated, but she had already destroyed the pub and put López in a hospital bed, so he could guess. First, she’d tried to kill him, then she’d almost managed to kill his best friend, and now López’s place was being searched by the police. Those couldn’t be coincidences.
    Worried he might get caught while pacing in front of the building, Carter walked away. He leaned on a public phone from where he could still keep watch of the entrance. He suddenly spotted a familiar face not far. He took a few quick steps and intercepted her before she could reach the line of police officers.
    “Hey, let me go,” she complained when he grasped her arm.
    “Calm down, Mariela, it’s just me,” Carter said.
    “Reese?” She looked genuinely surprised to see him. “What do you want?” she asked, this time with an angry note in her voice.
    “I just wanna understand what’s going on,” Carter said, letting go of her arm.
    “It’s your fault Rafa is in the state he is,” she raged on. “I knew you’d be trouble in the end. I warned him, but he would never listen. And now he’s half dead, and…” Mariela’s growing sobs prevented her from continuing.
    “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen,” Carter apologized.
    “Of… course… you did… didn’t,” she replied through bitter tears.
    Carter looked away. He wasn’t used to comforting