Sunset Key by Blake Crouch Read Free Book Online

that caliber would finish her.
    “What does this have to do with me?” she asked.
    Fitch turned and faced her.
    “Sugar, there’s one thing I’ve never done. I was too old for the draft in nineteen-sixty-nine. I’ve never been to war, which means I’ve never had the experience of taking a life.”
    “He’ll kill you,” she said. “Even in prison, he can get to you.”
    “Are you talking about Mr. Estrada?”
    She nodded.
    “You don’t see it yet, do you?”
    “See what?”
    “It was Javier who put this whole thing together, Letty. There was never any painting. No drug in your mouthwash spray. I told him about this last experience I wanted to have before I went away, and for a very significant price, he brought you to me.”
    Letty felt a surge of hot bile lurch out of her stomach—anger and fear.
    She fought it back down.
    “Johnny…”
    “What? You going to beg me not to do this? Try to test the limits of my conscience? Good luck with that.”
    “It won’t be how you think. It’s not some great rush.”
    “See, you don’t understand me. I have no expectations of feeling one way or another. I just want to have done it. What’s a richly lived life that has never caused death? You ever killed someone, Letty?”
    “Yes.”
    “How was it?”
    “Self-defense.”
    “Kill or be killed?”
    She nodded.
    “Well, how was it?”
    “I think about it every day.”
    “Exactly. Because you had a true experience. And that’s all I want. This is how it’ll work. I’m going to wait right here for five minutes. Give you a head start. See, I don’t just want to kill you, Letty. I want to hunt you.”
    “You’re as evil as they say.”
    “This is not about good and evil. I’ve lived dangerously all of my life. I want to continue to do so on this final night, when it counts the most. My security team is on their way down the dock as we speak. They’re going to anchor my speedboat a quarter mile out. My yacht is staying in the marina in Key West for the night. It’ll just be you and me on the island. I know you can’t swim, Letty. That was one of the requirements that, unfortunately for you, landed you this job. So there are no ways off this little island.”
    “I have a son,” she said.
    “Haven’t we covered that already?”
    “Johnny, please.” Letty stood up slowly and moved forward with her arms outstretched, hands open. “Has it occurred to you that you aren’t thinking clearly? That you have all this emotion swarming around inside of you and—”
    Fitch pointed the revolver at her face and thumbed back the hammer.
    “That’s close enough.” It wasn’t the first or the second or even the third time she’d had a firearm pointed at her. But she’d never got used to that gaping black hole. Couldn’t take her eyes off it. If Fitch chose to pull the trigger in this second, it was the last thing she’d ever see.
    “You destroyed thousands of lives,” she said, “but you aren’t a murderer, Johnny.”
    “You’re right. Not yet. Now you have four minutes.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

    L etty raced down the spiral staircase.
    Drunk.
    Terrified.
    Still trying to wrap her head around what had just happened.
    Only one conclusion. Javier had played her.
    Sold her out.
    She passed the second floor and ran down the remaining steps into the living room. Straight to the cordless phone on a bookshelf constructed from pieces of driftwood. She grabbed the handset off its base, punched Talk .
    Fitch was already on the other end of the line. “I’m afraid that’s not going to work, Letty. Three minutes, thirty seconds. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight…”
    I need a weapon.
    She dropped the phone and turned the corner into the kitchen. She started yanking drawers open.
    As she pulled open the third, she saw it lying on a butcher-block cutting board next to a pile of onion and garlic skin. A chef’s knife with a stainless handle and an eight-inch blade.
    For ten seconds, she stood in the remnants of Angie’s