Tell No Lies by Gregg Hurwitz Read Free Book Online Page B

across, his shoulder scuffing a trunk, sending off a puff of bark dust.
    He searched for the street numbers, his wild gaze finally landing on 1737. Dueling columns, cracked steps leading to a wide, unlit porch inlaid with Art Deco tile. Three red doors stood out like something from a game show, the building carved into different apartments, number two oddly on the right.
    He jumped up onto the porch and skidded to a stop before door number two, his heart thumping. A brass lion knocker stared out at him, and he stared right back.
    Now what?
    In his slalom down the hill, he hadn’t contemplated much besides Marisol Vargas and the dashboard clock.
    Sorry, ma’am, but someone with bad handwriting’s coming to kill you, oh, right about now.
    It would have to do.
    As he reached for the brass knocker, his gaze snared on the narrow strip of black at the seam of the jamb. The door was a half inch ajar.
    The killer was already inside.
    The night breeze seemed to blow right through Daniel, bones and all.
    He lifted his hand to the wood, applied a hint of pressure. The door swung silently inward.
    The foyer, revealed by degrees. Side table with bowl. A Jim Dine print, tilted nearly off the wire. Tangled fringe of an expensive rug, one corner flipped back to show the pad beneath.
    She’d fought.
    His fist ached around the knife handle. His arm, knotting from the tension.
    He told his fingertips to apply more pressure to the door, and they did, the view widening inch after maddening inch. Past the foyer, beyond the dark dining room, and through a doorway, a recessed light glowed in the kitchen ceiling.
    He blinked, the tableau assembling itself in chunks.
    Under the fall of light, a woman on her stomach, cheek mashed to the floor, her temple swollen, strands of hair matted to one bloody cheek. The kitchen doorjamb seeming to cut her off at the thighs. Her arms wrenched painfully back, wrists bound at the base of her spine. Eyes straining, pupils swimming in white.
    She was staring directly at him.
    With horror he realized that she must have been watching the entire time. Pinned to her own floor, her only view a sideways tilt through two unlit rooms, every last hope glued to the front door creeping open.
    Dark tracks ran across the bridge of her nose and down her temple, and it took him a moment to realize through his shock what they were. Tears of blood. She’d been cut?
    The woman’s lips moved, and somehow he heard her fear-desiccated voice: “… help me.”
    Her imploring stare froze him there in the doorway.
    The last thing he wanted to do was go into that house. But how could he leave her there?
    From somewhere behind her, footsteps creaked the floor.
    Daniel made no conscious decision to enter; his legs just moved him. Sliding inside, he eased the door mostly closed behind him to eliminate the light profile, however faint, from the porch.
    There he was, armed with a cooking utensil and two weeks’ training in hostage-crisis intervention, in a closed space with a murderer.
    He took swift, weightless steps through the foyer, then sliced through the dining room to get out of the sight line, veering for the wall just beside the doorway. As he neared, a large shadow edged into view in the kitchen beyond, but he jerked right and flipped, planting his shoulder blades silently against drywall, just out of sight. Hanging plants all around stained the air with a fecund, earthy smell.
    A blurred, masculine voice: “What?”
    From the cramped vantage, Daniel could see only a sliver of kitchen, the outer edge of the light’s glow, a tumble of Marisol’s hair.
    He was sucking air. His heartbeat seemed so loud he thought it might give him away.
    Breathe. Breathe.
    He wanted to get the drop, but there was no time. He’d have to go in blind. Straight jabs so the killer couldn’t block his arm.
    Just like a wrestling takedown.
    But with a butcher knife.
    “… elp me.”
    Daniel braced himself. A panic beat pounded in his skull. His legs