Castroville: Countdown to Armageddon: Book 7 Read Online Free Page A

okay for a woman. A woman who he’d coveted and admired from a distance for a very long time.
         It didn’t matter that Hannah belonged to a good friend. A man who’d risked his life to save Robbie’s on not one, but two occasions. A man who’d opened his home to Robbie when Hannah and her girls had gone away to avoid the plague.
         In Robbie’s twisted mind, John Castro had given him refuge not to be a friend, but to torture Robbie. For in John’s home Robbie was able to walk the same steps his beautiful Hannah had once walked. To sit in the chairs where she’d once sat.
         John noticed that some of Hannah’s things were disappearing. The nightgowns she’d worn but hadn’t yet washed before the power went out. Her panties. Her favorite perfume. But he didn’t put the clues together until it was too late.
         Until after Robbie had fired two .556 shells into John’s body from a sniper’s nest ninety yards away.
         Robbie had brought all his trophies here, to the zoo. It was his sanctuary, his safe house. The only place left where he felt he could hide and escape justice.
         Because nobody ever went to a boarded up zoo that no longer contained animals.
         There was no reason to. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along now. People who’d survived the one-two punch of the blackout and the plague… well, they were just too busy trying to survive from day to day. They didn’t have time to go explore some stinkin’ place which once held animals but now held nothing.
         Except Robbie. And he too had essentially turned into nothing of consequence.
         Robbie huddled in his sleeping bag, one of Hannah’s nightgowns pressed tightly against his face.
         It still smelled like her, although the scent had faded considerably in the four months he’d had it.
         With the soft red silk against his face he could close his eyes and easily imagine she was there with him. It comforted him a bit.
         But Robbie Benton could only draw so much comfort, for he was still a very angry man.
         The criminally insane seldom see their madness for what it is. In their minds, they are the righteous and the just. Others are lined up against them, out of jealousy or spite. Others are the wrongdoers and they are the oppressed. Merely innocent victims wondering why the rest of the world is picking on them.
         Robbie was no different. In his mind, he was justified in pursuing Hannah, even if it meant murdering one of his best friends. Hannah was a trophy worth fighting for, and in this new violent world in which they all lived, the end justified the means.
         The means, in his case, was merely clearing a path for Hannah to be Robbie’s trophy. And that meant shoving John Castro out of the way.
         The SAPD should never have investigated him. Yes, they would have lost a good officer if Robbie’s shots had been truer. But so what? They’d already lost eighty percent of their force due to gun violence after the blackout. Or to desertion. Or to suicide. Or to the plague. So what was one more cop, in the grand scheme of things?
         In Robbie’s mind the SAPD would have come out ahead if they’d just left well enough alone. In Robbie’s mind he was a much better cop than John Castro ever was. If they’d just let him kill John, Robbie would have taken his place as the department’s golden boy. The hero everyone looked up to. But no… they’d decided to go after Robbie instead. To put him behind bars with those miscreants and evildoers he’d arrested over the previous months.
         To a cop that was a fate worse than death. And one which Robbie would not tolerate.
         So he’d exact his revenge, against police chief Mike Martinez. And John Castro. And all the others who’d chosen to go after him and persecute him. And if he had to, he’d die in his battle of good over evil. Sometimes the good had to die in the pursuit