Confidential Prey (Nick Teffinger Thriller) Read Online Free Page A

fire,” she said.
     
    They let themselves get soaked by the buzz of the strip. Teffinger kept his arm around the woman’s waist, occasional ly moving his fingers a bit.
    Her muscles were taut.
    “There’s something you should know about me,” he said.
    “That sounds serious.”
    “It sort of is,” he said. “Someone’s out to kill me.”
    Raverly came to a stop and looked at him.
    “Who?”
    “I don’t know,” he said. “Two weeks ago I picked up this girl hitchhiking. She was broke and from out of town and just got dumped by her boyfriend. It was storming out and she was soaked and cold. I tried to get her a hotel but she had this thing about not taking charity. Finally I convinced her to at least sleep on my couch for the night.”
    “I remember that storm. I watched it for over an hour.”
    “Then you know how bad it was,” Teffinger said. “My whole neighborhood was in blackout when I got hom e . Nice guy that I am, I talked her into taking my bed and letting me sleep on the couch. She didn’t want to put me out but finally relented. When I woke up the next morning, she was dead in the bed. She’d been stabbed in the side of the head with a knife that was meant for me. Whoever did it thought they were killing me.”
    “Damn.”
    “Right, damn,” he said. “I can’t stop thinking about it. The poor girl, I don’t even know who she was. She told me her first name—Atasha—but I never even asked her last name. She didn’t have any identification her purse, no driver’s license or anything. All she had was makeup, a couple of candy bars and $27.32 in cash.”
    “Did she say where she was from?”
    “New York, on her way to Seattle,” he said. “I’ve spent hours trying to trace her with no luck.”
    “What a nightmare.”
    “Actually, it is; and I don’t want it spreading in your direction,” he said.
    “Well, maybe I do,” she said. “Do you have any idea who wants you dead?”
    “Nothing concrete,” he said. “The best guess is that it relates to an old case; maybe a brother or relative of someone I ended up catching, something like that. We’re pulling files but nothing’s jumping up and shouting yet.”
    Raverly ran a finger down his cheek.
    “You were all sexy out there in the desert today, sweating and everything,” Raverly said. “Did I mention that before?”
    Teffinger shifted his feet.
    “No, you must have forgotten.”
    “Well bad, bad me. Let’s get back to your room and I’ll make it up to you.”

6
    Day Fourteen
    August 16
    Tuesday Morning
     
    The earliest flight to Denver took off just as the Nevada sun rose over the desert. Teffinger put the armrests in a death grip and concentrated on the structural stress of the aircraft. The wheels lifted, the heavy vibration disappeared and the ground dropped away at a crazy speed.
    Raverly patted his hand.
    “Imagine that, you’re still alive.”
    He grunted.
    “Tomorrow’s the day,” he said. “I feel like time’s a python and it has me in a stranglehold. The chief is going to want a full briefing. Then he’s going to want to get a plan in motion for tomorrow night. That means mobilizing people, which in turn means meetings, lots and lots of meetings—meetings I don’t have time for, to be precise.”
    “Blow them off.”
    “Play it out,” he said. “I blow them off, the guy takes his kill, and then I get the blame for not being a team player. On the other hand, if I can get all the noise out of my life and concentrate, I’ll have a better chance of figuring out who he is. That’s the key, not to blanket the city with a shotgun, but figure out who he is and introduce him to a rifle shot.”
    “So it comes down to whether you want to cover your ass or catch a killer.”
    He nodded.
    “That’s it, to a point. When you get right down to it, if I cover my ass all I’m doing is being selfish. I’m putting myself before the wellbeing of the next victim.”
    “So what are you going to