Silent Kills by C.E. Lawrence Read Free Book Online

much about you.” She managed to make the comment sound like a challenge at best, and at worst, an insult.
    Elena Krieger was up to the challenge. “I’m sure you have,” she replied with a superior smile that was dangerously close to a smirk. She turned to Lee, dismissing Susan with a twist of her powerful shoulders. “Is there somewhere we can go to talk about the case?”
    The implication was clear: the office was contaminated with the unwanted presence of Susan Morton.
    But Susan was not about to be brushed aside by a redheaded Brunhilde. “I was just leaving,” she snapped. Grabbing her designer pocketbook in a single swipe, she swept from the room in a cloud of Chanel No. 19.
    Lee had never liked Chanel No. 19.
    “That’s better,” Krieger said loud enough so that Susan could hear. “Now we can get down to business.”
    As he watched Susan’s retreating figure, Lee couldn’t help thinking this was not going to end well.

CHAPTER TEN
    Samir Haddad was frightened. He was not a timid man, but lately he was frightened quite a lot of the time. Ever since that terrible day, when death rained down from the sky, everything had changed. Business was down, and people looked at him differently now. Not his regular customers—if anything, they were even kinder now—but the tourists and out of towners were skittish. When they heard his accent, sometimes they would look at him as if he were going to attack them, which was absurd.
    Samir was a pacifist, and had fled Jordan to avoid the grinding politics of the Middle East; he had no allegiance with the eleven men who pledged themselves to destruction in the name of Allah. He wasn’t even a believer, though he went to mosque like a good Muslim. He knew a lot of observant Christians and Jews didn’t believe in God either, so he didn’t see anything strange in it, though he rarely admitted his lack of faith to anyone.
    Samir raked a fork over the hot coals in his vendor cart and watched as the sparks sailed into the night sky, a thousand tiny red eyes scanning the darkness. He looked down Fifth Avenue at the dark line of pedestrians swarming up the sidewalk, their heads bobbing like apples in a sea of bodies, their faces wearing the protective New York expression he knew so well.
    It wasn’t a shell, exactly; it was more like a persona, he thought as he opened a new package of pita bread. Except that eventually it reached all the way down inside of you and changed who you were. Maybe it was the accelerated pace of life—the constant stimulation, the unrelenting sights, sounds, smells, and noise—but it caused children to grow up faster, and adults to wither earlier. If you were up to it, Samir thought, it was hard to imagine living anywhere else; if you weren’t, it could crush you.
    But lately the shell had grown thinner. People were wary, but they were also wearing their emotions more on the surface. Samir could tell when people approached him what their reaction was going to be from their body language. He had seen some stop and stare when they heard his accent—again, mostly tourists. Others actually walked away shaking their heads and glancing over their shoulder, as if he was going to lob a grenade at them from his food cart.
    He sighed and chopped the onions and chicken on the grill into finer pieces, then sprinkled them with his own concoction of lemon juice, vinegar, and spices. It wasn’t good to look idle—it was better to appear busy, even with no customers at the cart. Americans liked people who always seemed to be working. They didn’t trust you if you stood around with your hands in your pockets, especially if you had a face and voice like his.
    A young man approached his cart. He had a loping, loose stride, and was dressed very neatly in a conservative suit. There was even something old-fashioned about it, with the narrow lapels and thin pinstripes on the jacket and matching trousers. Samir was very good at sizing people up—in his job, he had to