Kill Her Again (A Thriller) Read Online Free Page B

fourteenth floor. Anderson Troy’s private domain was as immaculate as a biological clean room and just about as welcoming.
    After a long, slow ascent, still slightly hazed by the killer pot, Pope stepped off the elevator and looked down at the spotless white carpet. Not a stray cigarette ash or splash of bourbon in sight.
    “Good morning, Daniel.”
    Pope looked up to find Troy’s personal assistant, Arturo, standing before a set of double doors. To one side of the doors was a neat row of shoes.
    “Morning, Arturo.”
    Knowing the routine, Pope slipped off his loafers and lined them up next to the others. Anderson Troy was neither eccentric nor germaphobic, but he did like to keep his carpet clean, especially after his staff and visitors had been traipsing around the casino below.
    Pope had once asked him why he hadn’t renovated the entire hotel rather than just the fourteenth floor, and Troy had told him that he was afraid it would scare away the locals and budget tourists who made up ninety percent of his trade.
    “Besides,” Troy had said, “it would cost too much. And you know how fond I am of money.”
    Pope did indeed. In fact, his own current lifestyle was, in part, the result of that fondness. But he also knew that the Oasis, just as it stood, was the perfect under-the-radar cover for Troy’s other, less legitimate, activities.
    Anderson Troy was not your typical casino owner. For that matter, he wasn’t your typical anything .
    He was, however, a dangerous man.
    Once Pope’s shoes were in place, Arturo handed him a pair of disposable foot covers, which he dutifully slipped on over his socks.
    He felt like a toddler wearing bunny pajamas.
    “Go on in,” Arturo said. “He’s expecting you.”
    No shit, Sherlock.
    Pope almost made the remark out loud, but restrained himself. What was the point? Arturo was a simple working man who did his job and seemed to bear no grudges against anyone. Even when he was killing them.
    Instead, Pope nodded and pushed through the double doors into the now familiar lair of one of the youngest self-made multi-millionaires in the world. A man who had made those millions in DVDs and video games, among other things. Not creating them, mind you, but hacking their copy protection, pirating and selling them overseas.
    Only a select few knew that Troy was worth so much. And since making his first several million, he had branched out into a variety of Internet schemes that could potentially land him in prison for life, if he weren’t so good at remaining anonymous.
    A self-styled gangster, he was really nothing more than a thirtysomething computer geek with a lot of hired muscle. And, of course, the will to use it when necessary.
    He was sitting on the sofa, which was a soft gray puff of nothing that blended in beautifully with the muted grays and whites that dominated the room. Looking like a stain on the fabric, he was hunched over a laptop computer, wearing a faded GOT ROOT? T-shirt and frayed, cut-off maroon sweats, his stringy wannabe rock star hair hanging in his face.
    He didn’t bother to look up when he said:
    “A fag?”
    These were the last words Pope had expected to come out of Troy’s mouth at that particular moment, so he responded with a simple, “What?”
    Troy tore himself away from the computer screen and made eye contact. “You want me to believe I was once a faggot? A homo?”
    “I think the politically correct term is gay,” Pope said.
    “I don’t give a fuck how you candy-coat it. This Nigel Fromme guy? I just did a Google on him and found some very disconcerting information. Turns out he was an artist. One of the hottest painters of his time.”
    “What’s wrong with that?”
    “Not a thing,” Troy said. “It’s his sexual orientation that concerns me.”
    “I take it he’s gay?”
    “Gayer than a bucket full of butterflies.”
    “So? What difference does it make?”
    “Difference?” Troy closed his laptop, got to his feet. He was high