The Bones Of Odin (Matt Drake 1) by David Leadbeater Read Free Book Online Page A

saying she helped rob the museum?”
    “That I am, sir. That I am.” Drake walked to the window and stared at the car-lights whipping by below. “Hard to digest isn’t it? Maybe she has made money her new vocation.”
    Behind him he could hear Ben and Kennedy making notes about well-known and unknown locations of the Nine Pieces of Odin.
    Wells was breathing heavily. “Alicia fucking Myles! Riding with the enemy? No way. No way, Drake.”
    “I saw her face, sir. It was her.”
    “Jesus on a sidecar. What’s your plan?”
    Drake closed his eyes and shook his head. “I’m not part of the team anymore, Wells. I don’t have a plan, dammit. I shouldn’t need to have a plan.”
    “I know. I’ll assemble a team, pal, and start looking into it from this end. The way things are progressing, we might want to make some big strategies. Keep in touch.”
    The line went dead. Drake turned. Both Ben and Kennedy were staring at him. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not cracking up. What have you got?”
    Kennedy used a spoon to whack a few sheets of paper she’d covered in cop shorthand. “Spear - Upsalla. Wolves - New York. After that, not a spiffing clue.”
    “We don’t all talk like we were born with silver spoons up our arses,” Drake snapped before he could stop himself. “Okay, okay. We can only deal with what we know.”
    Kennedy gave him an odd smile. “I like your style.”
    “What we know - ” Ben repeated, “is that Upsalla’s next.”
    “The question is - ” Drake muttered, “can my Gold Card handle it?”
     
     
     

EIGHT
     
    UPSALLA, SWEDEN
     
    During the flight to Stockholm, Drake decided to take advantage of Kennedy.
    Following a series of furious hand-signals between Drake and Ben, the New York cop ended up sitting by the window, with Drake next to her. Less chance of escape that way.
    “So,” he said as the plane finally levelled off and Ben flipped open Kennedy’s laptop. “I’m picking up a vibe. I’m not being nosey, Kennedy, I just have a rule. I need to know about the people I work with.”
    “I should’ve known . . . always a price to pay for the window seat, eh? Tell me first, how’d that vibe work with Alicia Myles?”
    “Reasonably well,” Drake admitted.
    “Can it. Whaddya wanna know?”
    “If it’s a personal problem - not a damn thing. If it’s work - a short synopsis.”
    “And if it’s both?”
    “Shit. I don’t want to pry, I really don’t, but I have to put Ben first. I promised him we’d survive this, and I’d say the same to you. We have a kill order against us. One thing you’re not is stupid, Kennedy, so you know I need to be able to trust you to work with me on this.”
    A flight attendant leaned over, offering a paper cup that read ‘We proudly brew Starbucks Coffee’.
    “Caffeine.” Kennedy accepted it with apparent glee. She reached out, brushing Drake’s cheek in the process. He noticed she was wearing the third nondescript pant-suit since he’d met her. It told him she was a woman who received attention for the wrong reasons; a woman dressing down to fit in where she seriously wanted to belong.
    Drake snagged one for himself. Kennedy drank for a minute, then slipped a strand of hair behind her ear with a gentle gesture that Drake found himself drawn to. Then she turned to him.
    “None of your damn business really, but I . . . I bagged a dirty cop. A forensic scientist. Caught him pocketing a fistful of dollars at a crime scene, and told I.A. about it. Ended up he got a stretch. A few years.”
    “Nothing wrong with that. His colleagues giving you shit?”
    “Man, shit, I can take. I’ve been taking it since I was five. What isn’t right, what fucks with my brain like a fucking power drill, is the reality you don’t think about - that every single one of this thieving bastard’s previous cases is then brought into question. Every. Single. One.”
    “Officially? By who?”
    “By shit-eating lawyers. By shit-eating