A Killing Sky Read Online Free Page B

on the card.”
    “Okay.”
    “Either way, I'll call you on your cell phone after I talk with the boyfriend. Okay?”
    “Okay.”
    She gave me the number, along with her sister's cell phone number and Jed Haynes's number and home address. When we finished, I paid the bill and walked her out of the restaurant.
    The spring sun was still a no-show. A gunmetal-gray sky arched over the downtown mall. The chill hit us and we both zipped up.
    “Thank you,” she said, standing on the bricked-in pedestrian Main Street, steam rolling from her pretty mouth. She stuck out her hand and I took it again. The fingers were still cold.
    “Don't thank me yet.”
    I had a troublesome inkling neither one of us would be so grateful when we found out what was happening with her look-alike sister and Mr. Jed Haynes.
     

4
     
    The cold washed over me like a purifying balm as I tried to shake the feeling, trudging back down the mall toward my office. I picked up the turnip when I made the turn down Second toward Water Street. It was all the guy could do, I noticed, to keep from breaking into a run. Not much experience, apparently, running a tail.
    He had been standing at the kiosk at the far end of the mall as we left the restaurant, pretending to talk on the phone. A pudgy little man in a long black raincoat. He kept shifting his gaze our way as Cassidy Drummond and I parted company, and for a few moments afterward he seemed uncertain about which one of us to try to follow, but then he took off after me. I'm sure he wouldn't have found my nickname for him flattering, but that was my first impression. Purplish skin with a bushy mustache and bulging eyes—a ripe, overgrown turnip packed into clothes.
    After rounding the corner out of his line of vision, I stopped, folded my arms, and leaned against a lamppost. It took only a few seconds for him to come panting around the corner in pursuit. At the sight of me waiting, he pulled up short.
    “We need to talk,” I said.
    We exchanged hard looks. His mustache twitched. He knew he was made. He shook his head and put his index finger to his lips as if to shush me, but what he was doing with his other hand interested me more. He moved it deftly beneath his long coat and came partway out with the barrel of a very large handgun, loosely pointing it in my direction.
    Not so obvious to anyone behind him or walking past, but he made sure it was plenty obvious to me. Since I'd left my .357 hanging in its shoulder holster over the hat rack in my office, I was in no position to play Wyatt Earp. Even if I had wanted to, the barrel of his gun looked about the size of your average redwood, so I would have been decidedly outgunned. Oh, well, you know what they say—the bigger the gun, the smaller the … ah, brain.
    “Here? In broad daylight?” I said. “There must be twenty witnesses within earshot who could ID you before you'd make it out of sight.”
    Something in his eyes told me such a problem was not a big concern for him. My identifying him, on the other hand, might be. He seemed to reflect on the possibilities for a moment. Then he put his finger to his lips again, turned, and disappeared back around the corner.
    When I got around to breathing, I decided—discretion in this instance being the better part of valor—not to follow. He'd made his choice when he came after me, so he had little if any chance of picking up Cassidy Drummond again. It was cold consolation as I made my way back to the co-op.
    “Sounds wild, my man.” Jake Toronto lifted his mustang boots onto the edge of my desk, put his hands behind his head, and leaned back in his chair. “Even if I wanted to pull a hoax, not sure I could come up with something that good.”
    Toronto is my ex-homicide partner from New York. He is also my falconry sponsor and best friend. Now and then we even manage to still do a little work together. He lives like a monk in the mountains, flying his goshawk and surviving mostly off his investments, but