The Best Victim (Kindle Serial) by Colleen Thompson Read Free Book Online Page A

crazy, if they were kept too long on their own.
    Just as he was growing crazy, cut from his familiar herd of spouse and friends and fellow agents. This has to stop, Brent , Carrie whispered, his dead wife’s voice inside his head.
    Beside him, Lauren balled up what was left of her meal and stuffed it in the bottom of the bag.
    “I think the dog got more of that than you did,” he ventured.
    “Tasted like old grease,” she complained. “I hope it doesn’t make her sick.”
    “Trust me on this. The food wasn’t the problem. For a long time, everything will taste off, or it won’t have any taste at all.” He recalled how little appetite he’d had in the months after Carrie’s death, how his old clothes seemed to swamp him. “Remember that and make yourself eat anyway. Go through the motions, or you won’t have the energy to handle all the things that have to be dealt with.”
    “I don’t want to handle anything. I don’t want to ‘get through it.’ I just—I just want Rachel, that’s all.”
    “I know,” he said, not trusting himself to say more, to tell her how two years later, he still wanted Carrie, the way she’d once been. How he would doubtless want her until they someday buried him by her side.
    Lauren said nothing, but her misery spoke for her, the wounded silence radiating off of her in waves. And vulnerability, as well, to as cruel a fate as the one the Troll King had inflicted on her sister.
    “There’s something else we need to talk about,” he managed, hating the emotion running roughshod over his voice.
    “I don’t want to talk anymore.”
    “Then listen, just listen. Because this bastard isn’t through yet.”
    “You have to understand,” she said, turning on him viciously, “I don’t give a rat’s ass about other people. I don’t have room left in my head for that now.”
    “In the last few months, he’s escalated, coming after his victims’ family members, too,” Brent explained, “harassing them about their loved one’s suffering and their failure to see it. To stop them from taking their own lives. The calls and messages have been beyond cruel and extremely graphic. He’s been torturing these women with excruciating details of their relatives’ deaths.”
    “These women?” She shook her head. “You mean, he hasn’t called you?”
    “I wish to hell he would,” he said, “but he has a type, and I’m not a pretty little blonde.”
    “Neither am I. So if you’re thinking of using me for bait—”
    “You’ve got the young and attractive part in spades, and you’ll be plenty blond once we lighten up your hair and get you saying the right things in front of the news cameras—”
    “What the hell? No,” she shouted, her voice so sharp it made the dog behind the seat yip. “I thought you wanted me to help you track him electronically—because of my experience with—with networking.”
    You mean hacking , he wanted to correct her, thinking about what Cisco had called her, “an old-school white hat freak.” Meaning that she liked breaking in for the thrill of breaking in, not doing any harm. For her clients, her work had another purpose: finding and closing security rifts before malicious hackers could exploit them.
    “I do need your experience,” he told her, “but the surest way to draw him out is for him to see you as a potential target. And the easiest way to do that is to disguise you as a potential vic—”
    “Screw that. I’m not some dancing pony for you to trot out for a performance. And I’m nobody’s damned victim . Including yours. You got that straight, Durant?”
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    They were closing in on Austin when Durant grimaced and turned an accusing look toward Lauren. “Tell me that’s not you.”
    “Ugh. Dumpling .” Her nose wrinkling, she turned to look back over the seat at the dachshund, who had a pained expression on her graying face. Or maybe she was just embarrassed. “Sorry about that.”
    Lauren was apologizing to the dog and