kiDNApped (A Tara Shores Thriller) Read Online Free Page A

alimony and child support payments every month to his ex-wife, meant that he could not have afforded the cost of the Hawaii trip on his own.
    Kristen said nothing. She only narrowed her eyes at him while hefting the small backpack that was her only piece of luggage before following the line a few steps closer to the counter.
    “Besides,” Lance pressed, “if you had someone else to go with you, like maybe a boyfriend or a husband… then maybe I wouldn’t feel the need to accompany you.”
    Kristen felt her cheeks burn. Damn her brother. He always had to remind her of the one area of her life that wasn’t going so well. Wasn’t going at all, she forced herself to admit.
    Kristen’s professional success had come at a price. Throughout college she had spent her time studying, working challenging intern positions, and writing theses. Although not unattractive, her mousy appearance—stringy, shoulder-length brown hair and average figure which was never clothed in the latest fashions—had not exactly been a guy magnet in college. Her social life had primarily revolved around study sessions with fellow overachievers from her science classes. She was embarrassed to admit that at the age of twenty-eight, she had still had only one serious boyfriend. And that relationship had ended years ago when she had switched schools to begin her PhD, the young man deciding to finish out his degree at Berkeley, where they’d met.
    The check-in line moved again. A gaggle of tourists ahead of them realized they were in the wrong line and left, and Kristen was walking up to the counter. She turned around to face Lance as a ticket agent called for her to step up.
    “Last chance for a free, semi-working Hawaiian vacation, brother. You coming?”

 
     
     
     
    … TTGG 5 TTCA...
    10:01 A.M ., FBI Field Office, Honolulu
     
    Tara shut the door to her small but blessedly private office. After years of government cubicles, being assigned a private workspace was not only a creature comfort, but a clear indication that she was moving up. Assistant Special Agent in Charge Tara Shores, the nameplate read.
    Tara had come here immediately after reporting the jumper to police. They had blocked off the street to traffic and sheeted what was left of the body, telling her that the man was no longer even remotely recognizable and that most of his teeth had been shattered, making identification by dental records impossible. They would try DNA, but that would take a while. In the meantime, two tourists who were close enough to the impact zone to be splattered with the jumper's blood were threatening to sue the hotel, the security company that contracted with the hotel, the real estate company selling the unit, and the city of Honolulu. Tara had turned over the jacket and the lapel pin to the cops and wished them luck.
    It was a sad fact that suicide jumpers were not uncommon in Waikiki—it happened at least once or twice a year, Tara knew, sometimes more. A month after she'd arrived a couple had jumped from a 19th floor lanai together. Suicide pact? A fight gone horribly wrong? It was never determined. But these deaths almost never made the local news, and hundreds of people would be trooping over the dried bloodstains the next day on the way to the beach, Tara thought. The party must go on.
    She kicked her shoes off, sat behind her desk and put her head in her hands. She couldn't shake the image of the Asian man falling to his death. Those eyes. Her fellow agents were unsympathetic, not that she expected otherwise.
    “ It's not the fall that kills you,” a rookie agent had joked in response to Tara’s recounting of the event, “it's the whole hitting the ground part.”
    “ Shut your mouth, Chavez, or I'll assign you to the city cleanup crew and you can personally scrub the blood off the street.” I'd like to see him joke about it after he let the guy drop. More death. Follows me everywhere.
    Tara had lost both of her parents to a car accident as a