Kill Her Again (A Thriller) Read Online Free

to realize she wasn’t wearing her coat, had left it hanging over her chair in the backyard.
    She could run back for it, but the boy might be gone by then. Hesitating only a moment, she looked up at the rusty mountains of junk that loomed above, then moved into the darkness between them.
    “Evan?”
    Nothing in return.
    “Evan, don’t be scared. I’m a friend. A friend of your mommy’s.”
    Still nothing. The darkness was nearly impenetrable here, the junk piles blocking out the moon. It suddenly occurred to Anna that Evan might not be alone, that the predator or whoever had killed those people back at the house might have been watching all this time.
    Watching and waiting.
    But for what?
    She reached to her holster and released her Glock, bringing it up in a two-handed grip, resting her finger against the trigger guard. Moving forward cautiously, she decided not to call out again. If the boy wasn’t alone, she saw no point in telegraphing her position.
    A sound spun her to the right. It was little more than a creak of metal that could simply have been caused by a shifting of the earth.
    But Anna didn’t think so.
    Turning, she wound her way around the large silhouette of what looked like the remnants of an old school bus. There was a moonlit clearing up ahead. Hearing the creak again, she gauged its direction and picked up speed, deciding to skirt the edge of the clearing to keep her exposure to a minimum.
    Then, just as she was edging closer to the moonlight, there was a burst of movement from inside a nearby pile of rubble as the boy, Evan, flew across the clearing and disappeared into the darkness on the other side.
    “Evan, wait!” she shouted, but he didn’t slow down.
    Quickly holstering her Glock, she ran for all she was worth, pain shooting through her ankle as she moved out into the open, knowing she was taking a risk exposing herself like this. But her instincts told her she was safe, that the boy was alone out here. Alone and afraid.
    She didn’t know what he’d seen back at that house, but suspected the worst, and all she wanted to do was catch up to him, to let him know that he wasn’t alone, that there were people who wanted to help him.
    “Evan!” she shouted, as she moved again into darkness, wishing she had her flashlight.
    Hearing a whimper, she froze, knowing she was close. And despite the lack of illumination, she sensed that the boy had miscalculated and had hit a dead end of some kind, a wall of junk that held no escape.
    She heard him struggling for breath. Raw and ragged. Frightened out of his wits.
    “Evan? Are you there? It’s okay; I won’t hurt you.”
    Then, as her eyes began to adjust, she could see the small, pale oval of his face, low to the ground, eyes wide and terrified. He was lying inside a warped wooden cabinet with one of its doors missing, the other hanging by a single hinge.
    Moving closer, Anna crouched down, peering in at him.
    “It’s okay, hon. It’s gonna be—”
    The vicious bark of a dog cut her off and spun her around. Anna reached for her Glock, but a shotgun blast to the sky stopped her cold as a flashlight beam shone directly in her face.
    “Keep your fuckin’ hands right where they are, missy. You wouldn’t be the first trespasser I’ve shot.”
     

4  
     
    D ANIEL POPE WAS watching himself on TV when he got the call.
    He did that a lot. Watched himself.
    Not out of any sense of vanity—that was one human failing Pope couldn’t claim—but simply because he found that studying his performances allowed him to improve his craft. Such as it was.
    While Pope didn’t take much pride in his personal life these days, he’d always been proud of his work. Something to cling to.
    And Pope desperately needed something to cling to.
    So there he sat, in the dim light of his hotel room, smoking a bowl of White Widow as he watched the DVD of last night’s show. The same DVD they sold to tourists in the casino lobby for fifteen bucks a pop.
    Then his cell