Soul Thief (Blue Light Series) by Mark Edward Hall Read Free Book Online Page B

paranoid. He understood this. But more than that, he was scared.
    There was still so much he did not know about Annie and her family; so much he’d never cared to know. He suddenly felt as if he’d been living in the dark for the past decade and now he was about to emerge into the light. A cold prickling sensation began at the base of his spine, swiftly progressing northward through his brain stem. The sensation settled in his frontal lobe making his brain squeal. He lowered his head feeling the dim stirrings of the migraine that was almost certain to follow. He reached his hand up and massaged the place where the bridge of his nose met his skull, the place where a long-lost seven year old friend had unwittingly driven a bone shard into his frontal lobe. Behind Doug’s eyes the black and ethereal fluttering that had been so much a part of his youth blossomed and took wing, momentarily blinding him with fear and dread.
    My name is Ariel and I need your help, a voice as clear as day said inside his head. Won’t you please help me? I’m in the House of Bones and I don’t know how to get out.
    Doug moaned; he was totally freaked, afraid that it was all com ing back on him again. Dear God, he begged of his maker. I can’t do this again. Don’t you see? I’ve never been able to help them, no matter how hard they pleaded. And I can’t help this one either. No matter how much I want to.
    “We’ll be on the ground in a few minutes,” he told Annie, his heart sinking with the thought of what lay ahead of them. He reached over and squeezed Annie’s paint-stained hand. It fell limply back into her lap as though she’d felt nothing at all.

Chapter 6
     
    It was twenty minutes past ten before Portland Police Lieutenant Richard Jennings left the scene of Doug and Annie McArthur’s ruined house and the subsequent carnage left in its wake. Five men were dead from gunshot wounds; none had been carrying identification. Even worse, there had been a massive pileup on both the north and southbound lanes of Interstate 95. Two motorists were dead and six more were hospitalized, three in critical condition. Two separate individuals had come forward saying that their cars had been hijacked by gunmen. One had identified photos of Doug and Annie McArthur; the other had no idea who the two gunmen were that threw her out of her vehicle, and furthermore, she could not adequately describe them. For unknown reasons, their faces were just blanks, she told authorities.
    Following the initial stages of the investigation, things had happened fast. The state police had quickly moved in and taken charge of the investigation, followed almost immediately by people in plain dark suits that Jennings recognized as federal agents. When he quizzed them about what agency they worked for he was given the cold shoulder. The state boys were soon gone, leaving Jennings to deal with the feds. For the most part they were rude assholes who treated Jennings like a boy scout. By mid-morning they’d dismissed him altogether, telling him in no uncertain terms that his help was no longer needed on the case. He was too close to McArthur and his wife to be objective. Jennings had left the scene feeling like a beaten dog, vowing that there was no way he was going to sit idly by while his best friend was in trouble and on the run. When he paid a visit to the city morgue he was informed that the dead gunmen had been seized by federal agents and flown to Washington. The coroner had not been given a reason.
    Jennings had dealt with feds before, on a number of cases, and he hated their guts. But these guys weren’t your regular feds; these guys were darker, more secretive, and infinitely more efficient than what he was used to dealing with. A sneaking suspicion began to creep over him as he smelled a rat. He wondered how long it would be before his old friend Zach Spencer showed up. He knew the drill. He’d been here before and he didn’t like the feel of it one