Beyond belief Read Online Free

the Lanchester. He palmed the grip a few times and softly rubbed the grooved trigger with his index finger.
    Natalie smiled, blowing smoke through her pursed lips. “This is where the sickos get a hard-on. Glad to see you're not one of those.”
    “The night is young.”
    She thought he was joking, but she wasn't positive. “What brings you to town?
Soldier of Fortune
annual convention?”
    “No.”
    “I heard about that little maneuver you pulled in the Balkans. Your employers were very happy. Pretty smart, soldier boy.”
    “I don't know what you're talking about.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “How much for the Lanchester?”
    “Eleven hundred.”
    “Too much. You're taking advantage of me.”
    Natalie took another puff from her cigarette. She'd put on a strong front, but she was afraid he could see her trembling hand. “I don't negotiate.”
    He looked at her as if he wanted to snap her neck, but he finally nodded. “Fine.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a thick roll of cash, and counted out eleven one-hundred-dollar bills.
    Natalie handed him the Lanchester.
    “You should wear a thicker jacket,” Lyles said. “It's pretty obvious you have cannons up your sleeves. What do you have, a pair of Rugers?”
    She dropped the cigarette, flicked her wrists, and two snub-nosed revolvers suddenly appeared in her hands.
    Lyles nodded. “Berettas. My mistake.”
    “You still didn't tell me what brings you to town.”
    “In your business, you should know better than to ask questions.”
    She did know better. If he hadn't made her sonervous, she never would have made that mistake. “Sorry.”
    He smiled and tucked the gun into his jacket. “But I don't mind telling you.” He didn't look back as he walked away from her. “Let's just say I'm here to get in touch with my spiritual self.”

I s it for real, Dad?” Joe woke up to find the morning newspaper on his chest. Nikki was standing over him. Joe tilted the paper up to see a large color photograph of Dr. Nelson impaled on the wall of his study.
    “Jesus!” He jerked upright in bed.
    “Did that really happen?”
    Who could have taken that picture? As he studied it, he realized that it had been shot from outside Nelson's house, through the upstairs window. A photographer with a long zoom lens could have taken it from the house across the street. Or a scanner geek might have shot it from a tree outside. “Yes, honey. It's real. I can't believe they printed this.”
    “I've seen worse.”
    “That doesn't mean I want you looking at it. I'd expect this from a New York tabloid but not splattered across the front page of
our
paper.”
    Nikki made a face. “Splattered? That's not even funny.”
    “It wasn't meant to be. And where have you seen worse?”
    “Monica and I watched a video where, like, ten people got slaughtered by a guy in a mask.”
    “Remind me to talk to her parents about that. Anyway, this is different.”
    She pulled her strawberry-blond hair away from her face. “I know. This is real.”
    Joe drew her close. She
did
know the difference. Her mother's death had been a crash course. For months afterward she had tried to ignore the pain, but she had gradually opened up about her feelings.
    He pushed her back and rolled up the newspaper. “This is why I had to drag you over to Wanda's last night.”
    Nikki's eyes widened. “No way! You were there?”
    He climbed out of bed and headed for the kitchen. “I'm afraid so.”
    She followed him. “Why didn't you wake me up and tell me about it?”
    “Oh,
that
would have been a nice bedtime story.”
    “It would have been a lot less scary than listening to Wanda scream cuss words on the phone to her ex-boyfriend.”
    “Remind me to talk to her about that.”
    “Don't talk to her, just get Vince next time.”
    Vince was her favorite baby-sitter, an aspiring young magician who often watched her when Joe worked late.
    “Vince had a late-night gig, and there's no way I would've given you the gory