Remote by Donn Cortez Read Free Book Online Page A

half-dead psycho?
    No.  A killer whose will had already been broken.  One that Remote could use in whatever fashion he wanted, a weapon sharpened by experience but no longer capable of resisting.  A murderer willing—even eager—for the chance to kill again. 
    It made sense.  Remote could be telling the truth.  But Jack would have to be very, very careful . . .
Jack: In fact, I do have a target lined up.  If it works out, I’ll get back to you.  Maybe we can set something up.
 
Remote: Outstanding.  I’m looking forward to it.
     
    ***
     “So, we’re really going to do this?”  Nikki asked. She and Jack were in the basement, but the training mats had been rolled up and the weight equipment pushed against the walls.  What was in the center of the room now was a single wooden chair, bolted to the floor at all four legs, a small metal table on wheels beside it, and a pole lamp with a halogen bulb that could be angled in any direction.
    “I think we have to,” Jack said.  He set a black leather briefcase on the chair and opened it.  Light gleamed on steel.
    “Sure you’re up to it?”  She stared at him coolly, evaluating.  Jack was in his mid-thirties, his body hard and muscular, his brown hair thinning.  He had a lot more scars now than when they’d started.
    “He views this like it’s a chess game, Nikki.  Innocent people are just pawns to be sacrificed so he can take out a bigger piece.  He sees the death of anyone from a child to a senior citizen as acceptable collateral damage, and he likes to play with bombs.  We have to stop him.”
    “I didn’t think the mission was about stopping people, Jack.  I thought it was about closure.  Filling holes, remember?”
    Jack took out a black velvet cloth, unfolded it and lay it on the table.  Filling holes.  That was what serial killers left—huge, gaping holes in people’s lives, holes that used to be a sibling or a partner, a child or a parent.  He couldn’t fill those holes, but he could make them smaller; he could provide the grieving with some answers.  He could tell them where a body was buried, or what their loved one’s last words had been.  And he could provide them with one hard, cold assurance that no one else could—that the person who’d stolen the life of someone precious was now dead as well.
    And that their dying had not been easy.
    “It’s still about closure,” said Jack.  “Don’t the families of the people Remote is blackmailing deserve to know the truth?  That their son or daughter isn’t really a killer, that they had no choice?”
    “Really, Jack?  Funny, you never seemed to care much about the friends or family of the people we take down.”
    Jack took a gleaming scalpel from the case, laid it out at the edge of the black cloth.  He added a pair of pruning shears beside it.
    “I care about all of them, Nikki.  I care about the mother that has to confront the fact that she raised a sociopath.  I care about the wife that never understood just what it was she married.  I care about all the colleagues a killer fooled for years.  I care about people knowing the truth.”
     “Which we leave for the cops, once we have it. Maybe that’s what we should do here, Jack; let the cops make the call on this guy.”
    Jack picked up a hacksaw, ran a thumb lightly along the blade to test the edge.  “No.   We know nothing about who he is or where he operates from—we’ve got nothing concrete to pass along.  All talking to the police at this point can do is expose us to an investigation.  We’re the only ones in a position to get close.”
    “And then what?  We expose the people he extorted, maybe screw their lives up even further?  Jesus, Jack, there’s no clean win here no matter what we do.”
    Jack put down the hacksaw and met Nikki’s eyes.  “There’s nothing clean about anything we do, Nikki.  We do what we have to, that’s all.  And we have to do this.”
    She studied him for a moment